


With Pie

by fructosebat



Series: Food = Caring = Food [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Thor 2 Spoilers, but only in very specific cases, mental illness is a real thing, pie is also a real thing, sometimes pie can help with mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fructosebat/pseuds/fructosebat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think I wanna talk to Loki.”</p>
<p>Erik dropped his dry-erase marker, and Jane looked up from her charts, startled.</p>
<p>“What?!” said Jane.</p>
<p>“I have a plan,” said Darcy to the two shocked scientists. “I’m gonna bring him pie.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bright Idea

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: For the purposes of this story, we’re going to pretend that Loki didn’t fake his own death, that he went along with Thor to fight Malakith on Earth, and that he was returned to his prison cell in Asgard after everything. M’kay? M’kay.
> 
> Let’s do this thing.

Darcy swallowed a bite of cereal. “So you’re saying, what, Asgard’s like deporting your brother to Earth?”

“Your Director Fury wishes to strengthen the diplomatic ties between Earth and Asgard.” Thor sitting in a chair at the kitchen table in Jane’s tiny London flat looked almost like a grownup sitting at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. At least he’d changed out of his armor and changed into what Darcy had termed his ‘lumberjack-wear.’ “The All-Father is being—indulgent. He is aware that your realm has suffered because of Loki’s actions. Director Fury thinks Loki should serve some of his punishment here.”

“I don’t want him back on Earth,” said Erik, who was dividing his attention between a sheet of paper onto which he was scribbling notes, his breakfast, and the conversation. “It’s not safe.”

“My father has provided SHIELD with specifications to construct an appropriate holding cell,” Thor said. “He will not be able to use his magic.”

“Still,” said Erik, a haunted look in his eyes. He returned to writing on his sheet of paper, aiming his spoon at his mouth with his other hand, and then missing and dumping cornflakes and milk on the table. He didn’t seem to notice.

There was a clatter from the other room and everyone turned to look. Jane emerged from the doorway, breathing hard and brushing hair out of her face.

“Maybe take a break from packing, Jane,” said Darcy.

“I’m almost done, though. And we’re leaving _this afternoon._ ”

Thor was smiling at her, amused and affectionate. “Come and sit down. I will help you after breakfast.”

Jane hesitated for a moment, then huffed a sigh and collapsed into the only vacant chair.

“I think it’s a good move on SHIELD’s part,” said Darcy, resuming the conversation. “Lets people know that the situation’s in _our_ hands, you know?”

“What are we talking about?” said Jane.

“Our _overlord_ coming back to Earth,” Erik said darkly. He swabbed at the table with a napkin, having finally noticed the mess he’d made.

“Loki?” said Jane, reaching for the box of cereal. “Didn’t he kind of—help us? During this whole—” she waved the cereal box around, “—convergence business?”

“He totes fought Elf-Guy, I saw him,” put in Darcy.

“Maybe he just wanted to save Earth for himself,” said Erik.

“Loki is still dangerous, however much he has helped us,” Thor said, his eyes downcast. “I fear my brother is lost to us forever.”

“He did just help save the universe,” said Jane.

“He killed hundreds of people!” said Erik.

“Closer to a hundred,” muttered Darcy into her cereal.

“He killed people!” Erik slammed his hand on the table, making Darcy and Jane jump. “It doesn’t matter how many!”

There was a tense silence for a moment, then Jane cleared her throat and said, “Darcy, why are you here and not at your apartment? Don’t you have to pack?”

“Please,” said Darcy. “All I own is books and clothes. It all fits into three boxes and a trash bag. Also, there’s breakfast here.”

An awkward silence as everyone returned to their food, Jane pulling cereal out of the box and munching on it dry.

“You know, Erik,” remarked Darcy, “you’re going to have to put on pants before we leave for the airport.”

“You’re not wearing pants,” Erik pointed out.

“She’s wearing a skirt,” said Jane.

“Hey, maybe you should look into those, Erik,” Darcy said, poking the cereal in her bowl with her spoon. “Then you can think and not get arrested for indecent exposure at the same time.”

***

Before they headed to Heathrow, Ian stopped by the rapidly-emptying flat (that Thor—very helpful when it came to lifting heavy boxes) to say goodbye and to thank Jane for letting him work with her, even if it was for such a short time. “It’s an experience I’ll never forget,” he said earnestly.

“That’s for damned sure,” said Jane, shaking his hand absentmindedly before going off to supervise the loading of delicate science equipment into the van.

Darcy appeared in front of Ian, suddenly, as she was wont to do. “Yeah, so, uh,” she began.

“It’s okay,” Ian said, with a wistful look. “Good luck in New York.”

“Thanks again for saving my life and stuff,” said Darcy, smiling. Then she grabbed him by the front of his shirt and French kissed him within an inch of his life, for old times’ sake.

 

Thor thought the airport was quaint and hilarious, which led Darcy to wonder how people got around on Asgard. Maybe teleportation? How cool would that be? The biggest problem they had, of course, was how to get Myeuh-Myeuh to America. When Darcy asked, Thor explained that, while flying with Myeuh-Myeuh would have been faster, using it to travel long distances was ‘tiresome.’ How it could have been more tiresome than seven hours in coach class, Darcy didn’t know. 

The trouble was that airport security wouldn’t let Thor bring a weapon onto the plane, and, of course, since no one else could lift the damned hammer, they weren’t able to check it. After about fifteen minutes of negotiation, with everyone getting more and more irritated as time went on, it was finally agreed that Thor would have to place the hammer in the cargo hold of the plane himself, and then retrieve it when they arrived. 

When the plane finally landed at around 10pm, the four of them trooped exhaustedly into two cabs to get to the meager accommodations Erik and Jane had managed to acquire with their grant money. 

The letter for the grant—which no one had applied for—had mysteriously appeared in Jane’s London mailbox only a few days after the—um— _events_ in Greenwich. Everyone agreed it was clearly SHIELD wanting Jane to move back to America where they could keep a closer eye on her. Still, money was money, which was hard to come by if you were considered crackpot scientists (‘Thousands of people have seen _definitive proof,_ but still they’re skeptical,’ complained Jane). Jane and Erik had settled on New York City as home base because they wanted to study the aftereffects of the wormhole that had been opened there the previous summer. Well, Jane wanted to. Erik seemed to be torn between wanting to forget the whole thing and wanting to find out/remember how the wormhole had worked.

The other reason for choosing New York City was that rent was way down, since people were still a _little_ freaked out by all the aliens that had come out of the sky.

 

  
Darcy, Jane, and Erik were living out of suitcases until the rest of their luggage was shipped to them. Thor didn’t have any extra luggage, since all he owned (having arrived on Earth with just a hammer and armor) was clothing and a toothbrush. Darcy grumbled about not having the rest of her books with her yet, especially since all Jane’s science stuff got expedited shipping and would arrive at the lab that morning.

At the new lab, which was some rented office space that had recently been repurposed, Darcy and Thor were sent out for coffee while Jane and Erik futzed with the lab equipment. Erik had hijacked one of Darcy’s larger peasant skirts (a throwback to a brief Bohemian phase Darcy went through in her freshman year), saying that he could think in it almost as well as he could think without pants. This led Darcy to vow she’d hunt down some kilts for him if it was the last thing she did.

People stared at Thor in the coffee shop, but Thor, clearly used to celebrity, just ignored their gazes and peered confusedly at the enormous variety of coffees on the chalkboard menu. “C’mon, big fella, we’ll just get you the biggest size they have,” said Darcy, patting Thor on the shoulder. Thor grinned at her.

While they waited in line, Darcy saw the perfect opportunity to pick Thor’s brain about something that had spiked her curiosity. She thought she’d come at it slyly, but sly for Darcy was like a conversational wrecking ball. “So, like, why’d your brother flip out and try to take over Midgard?” she said, keeping her voice relatively low.

After a few confused blinks, Thor seemed to take the question in stride. “From what the All-Father tells me, Loki discovered the true origins of his birth, and that is what caused his ill behavior.”

“Wait, so he’s not your real brother?” 

“He is and he is not."

They had to pause for a minute as Darcy put in their coffee order (‘No, like, bigger than a large. Do you have a size gigantic? Can you do like a box of coffee but in a giant travel mug?’), then they shifted down to the end of the counter. As they waited, Thor briefly sketched out what he knew about how Loki was ‘adopted’—more like taken as a war hostage!—and the way he discovered the truth about it.

“Your dad never _told_ him?!” Darcy exclaimed, and Thor shushed her when people at nearby tables turned to look.

“My father has always looked on Loki as his own son,” said Thor quietly.

“You can’t just not tell your kid he’s adopted—jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be more advanced than us,” said Darcy as she collected their coffee order from a harassed-looking barista. “Of _course_ he reacted badly. Though, I mean, most people when they find something like that out, they don’t run around trying to kill people.” She looked up at Thor, who was looking helpless and sad and a little bit silly holding a giant travel mug with the coffee shop’s logo of a cartoon armadillo on it. “I’m sorry,” she said, belatedly. “Jane says I can be really nosy. And rude.”

“It is all right,” Thor reassured her, and they silently walked out of the coffee shop and headed down the sidewalk.

“What it sounds like to me…” began Darcy after they’d crossed a busy street, “It sounds like your brother had a psychotic break.”

Thor looked down at her, bewildered. “I’m not familiar with that term.”

“I’m not an expert or anything—though I _have_ hung out with a lot of psych majors—but from what you’ve told me—you said your brother wasn’t violent or anything before he found this stuff out?”

“He was fond of causing mischief, but he was not malicious.”

“Right, well." Darcy sipped her coffee. “A psychotic break, from what I know, is where someone’s going along just like normal, and then something really awful happens and _wham_ they’re acting completely different. It’s like, surprise! Mental illness!”

“He is not the brother I grew up with,” Thor said mournfully.

“Personality changes, right. So is he in therapy?”

“Therapy?” Thor’s brow crumpled again in confusion.

“Is someone talking to him about this stuff?”

“My mother, while she lived, tried to reach out to Loki in his madness.” Thor took a morose sip out of his giant coffee mug.

“But a professional, though?”

Thor just looked sad.

“Is there no mental illness on your planet?” Darcy stared up at him as they began climbing the stairs to the lab. “Never mind, never mind.” Darcy shifted the coffee tray in her hands so she could reach up and pat Thor’s shoulder again. “Maybe SHIELD can send someone to talk to him when he gets here.”

“I do not think Loki would accept outside counsel,” said Thor as they entered the lab. Darcy took a breath to say something else when Jane interjected.

“Darcy, thank God! Come here, quick, hold this up!” Jane was precariously balancing a piece of lab equipment on a side table. Darcy hopped to.

***

There was a lot of media hullabaloo about Loki being brought back to Earth for his imprisonment. The public wasn’t told where he was being kept, of course—that would cause mass hysteria—but the team in Jane’s lab was clued in because of Thor. Well, partially clued in. Thor told them his brother was being kept in New York City: that way Thor would be nearby in case anything happened. Thor reassured them that _nothing_ would happen, since the security was set up to his father’s exacting specifications, but Erik developed dark circles under his eyes and would sometimes stop what he was doing and just walk out of the lab without speaking to anybody.

The people in Darcy’s online Advanced Political Theory course at Culver (her last three poli-sci credits—just winter study, one more class, and then graduation, woo-hoo!) got into a debate about the political ramifications of harboring an alien criminal on Earth. Darcy wasn’t supposed to disclose the inside info she had, but she did put in her two cents on the matter.

She thought it was a good idea, dammit. It showed Earth was owning the situation, and that they were getting buddy-buddy with an alien government, and that if someone committed a crime on Earth then that meant that person was under Earth’s jurisdiction, and would serve their punishment as Earth saw fit.

Darcy was totally gonna get an A+ for class participation.

One day in the lab, when Jane was muttering science terms to herself, Erik was scrawling equations all over a whiteboard, and Darcy was spinning idly on a lab stool during a rare moment of downtime, Darcy said,

“I think I wanna talk to Loki.”

Erik dropped his dry-erase marker, and Jane looked up from her charts, startled.

“What?!” said Jane.

“I have a plan,” said Darcy to the two shocked scientists. “I’m gonna bring him pie.”

Abruptly, Erik walked out of the lab, skirt swirling, slamming the door behind him. 

“But—he tried to kill us!” said Jane.

“That was like, two years ago, though,” argued Darcy. 

“But he—“

“And you said yourself that he helped us out with fighting Malthus or whatever—“

“ _Malakith,_ ” corrected Jane.

“Right, but the point is that he fought him.”

“He had something to gain, too, though. If the universe was destroyed—or—or made dark, and he’s a part of it, he’d be ‘made dark,’ too!”

“Maybe I can figure out what made him go all wacko and try to kill everyone, though.”

Jane stood and moved to Darcy. “Darcy, you can’t just…” Jane made a gesture that was at once helpless and exasperated.

“No, but listen. One time my cousin Sheila went through this really bad breakup with her fiancé, and she was in a real bad place, but I totally helped her through it. With pie.”

Jane made a helpless noise, mouth open, struggling for speech.

Darcy pointed at her. “I bet Thor thinks it’s a great idea.”

 

Thor _did_ think it was a great idea, though he had his reservations.

“It could be dangerous,” he said, after Erik had pointedly stormed out of the apartment, muttering something about going to the pub.

“Why?” said Darcy. “You said your dad’s cell design was foolproof.”

“Yes, but—“

“You tested it yourself!”

Jane peeked her face out from where she was rubbing it exhaustedly with her hands at the counter. “Darcy…”

“My brother is skilled in more than just magic. He knows how to manipulate people.”

“Thor.” Darcy gave him a look. “Am I someone who can be manipulated?”

Thor and Jane looked at each other.

“I still think this is a bad idea,” said Jane.

“I do not know what harm it could do,” said Thor.

“Look at what it’s doing to Erik!”

“I’ll give Erik some pie, too,” said Darcy sagely.

There was a pause, and then Jane said, “This is going to end badly.”


	2. Beginnings

It took several days of intermittent negotiation with Director Fury on Thor’s part, and then Darcy had to go in and actually meet the guy—Fury was going for the all-black-clothing intimidation look, like a movie villain, which Darcy thought was pretty chill if a little melodramatic—and it was finally decreed that Darcy was harmless, and on her own head be it, and she would probably give up soon anyway.

Tuesday, the first day that Darcy showed up to the cell (the security just to get in was _insane_. She had to go through a metal detector, a retinal scan, a bag search, and some kind of magic wand that went _wooooooo_ just to get into the room _outside_ of the room with the cell in it), she heard a lot of screaming and crashing from her position in the hallway, so she figured Loki was busy and she’d come back later.

Wednesday Darcy showed up and all was quiet, so the guard simply raised his eyebrows at her and gestured Darcy on in.

The cell was brightly lit with fluorescent lights— _shudder_ —and was only open on one side, with something like plexiglass lining it floor-to-ceiling. Inside the cell there was a bunk with a scratchy-looking gray blanket, a commode, and a metal chair. The chair looked all dented and beat-up—it was probably what Darcy had heard crashing the previous day. 

Loki was pacing, agitated, wearing uncomfortable-looking prison blues. The overhead fluorescent lights did nothing good for his complexion. When he spotted Darcy entering the room he stopped pacing and looked her up and down.

“Leave,” he said.

“I brought you pie,” said Darcy, waving the box at him.

“Leave _now,_ ” he snarled, looming dangerously as close as he could get behind the plexiglass.

“You don’t scare me, you’re all locked up in there.” Darcy dumped her bag on a small table across from the cell. She placed the pie box carefully beside it, then started pulling plates and various sundries from the bag. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You look thin,” she observed, opening the pie box and starting to slice it with a plastic knife. “Definitely need pie.”

When she finally turned back to face the cell, Loki was staring at her with a piercing gaze, like he was trying to dissect her. “I know you,” he said, finally. “You were there when we fought the dark elves.”

“Yep, that’s me. My name’s Darcy? Darcy Lewis? I’m Jane Foster’s assistant.”

Loki blinked slowly at her, tense and unmoving. “Why are you here?”

“Pie,” she said, smiling gamely. Locating the little slidey food slot to one side of the plexiglass wall, Darcy put a plastic spoon on the paper plate next to the slice of pie and went through the complicated process of sending it through to Loki. _Ka-chunk._ Now that she touched the plexiglass stuff, she noticed it didn’t really feel like plexiglass. She couldn’t really identify what it felt like. Sort of buzzy. Darcy went back and sat at the chair beside the little table, and took a bite of her own slice of pie, grinning.

Loki was still staring at her, though his expression looked less calculating and was edging towards genuine confusion. After a moment, he switched to staring at the pie, and then shifted his gaze back to her. 

Darcy gestured with her plastic spoon. “ _Mangia!_ ”

Loki stared some more.

Darcy was about halfway through her slice of pie when Loki spoke again. “Did Thor put you up to this?”

“Nope! Totally my idea.” She leaned in conspiratorially to him. “I don’t buy pie for just any criminal, you know.”

Loki looked like he was trying to hide the fact that he just couldn’t figure her out. “I’ve just eaten.”

“No, you haven’t,” said Darcy, smacking her lips, intent on her pie. “Guard says you haven’t eaten since two days ago.” She looked up at him. “I got you chocolate cream pie, by the way. I didn’t know what you’d like, but I figured you can’t go wrong with chocolate. _Never_ wrong with chocolate. _God,_ ” she said, taking another bite. “Yelp said this was the best pie in the city,” she said, her mouth full. “I haven’t tried all the pie in the city, but I’m inclined to believe them.”

Loki watched her while she finished her pie and while she stood up and threw away the plastic spoon and paper plate. When she finally turned to face him again, he turned sharply and walked back to his bunk. He lay down facing the wall.

Whatever. Darcy pulled out her laptop and a big fat poli-sci textbook. Might as well get some homework done.

Two hours later, Darcy saved the rough draft of her essay for her online course and saw that Loki was still pointedly facing away from her. She packed up her stuff and left.

***  
Darcy tried going back the next day, but there was more shouting and crashing, so she left Loki to it. Then Jane dragged Darcy out onto the streets of New York for the next two days to take readings of science-science-whatever with the toaster-looking thing, so the next time Darcy got to go see Loki was three days after her first visit. Thor had asked her how it went, and when she told him he wouldn't eat his pie, Thor confessed sadly that Loki wouldn't even _look_ at him anymore, and that he’d stopped trying to visit. Then Darcy felt a little like a tool, though not completely, since Thor did get the midnight munchies that same night and ate all the rest of the chocolate cream pie.

Saturday rolled around and she figured if Loki ignored her, she could at least get more work on her paper done. Darcy swung by that really great pie place again and made her way to the super-top-secret underground SHIELD facility. 

“Apple pie this time,” she announced as she walked in, holding the bakery box aloft.

While she set up the plates and sliced the pie, she could feel Loki’s eyes on her back. She turned around and he was sitting on his bunk, staring at her like she was some strange creature from another world. Which she guessed, to him, she was.

“There,” she sent it through, _ka-chunk._ “Eat up.”

Loki gawked at her some more as she set up her study supplies, taking a bite of her pie as she booted her laptop. Darcy refrained from pointing out that it was impolite to stare.

Just was she was starting to type, Loki spoke. “What is your motive?” He said it calmly, but Darcy thought she could hear the confusion underneath.

Darcy shrugged. “I needed a quiet place to study.”

Loki looked pointedly from her to the pie in his food slot.

“Oh. Yeah, thought you might like some pie.”

Loki absorbed this for a moment, and then with sudden wrath stormed to the front of his cell, slamming his hand against the glass. “I don’t need your _pity!_ ” His voice was a harsh whip crack in the still room. Darcy could hear the slight feedback as his volume went above what the little speakers at the side of the cell were designed to carry.

“It’s just pie, dude, I swear!” said Darcy casually, holding up her hands.

“ _You_ are nothing more than an insect beneath my boot. You’re an _atom._ ”

“Geez, no need to be rude,” Darcy said in consternation. “If you don’t want pie I’ll stop bringing it. Save some money. Pie doesn’t grow on trees, you know.” Shaking her shoulders, she turned back to her laptop, made a face at it, and began to type again.

She saw Loki still looming in the periphery of her vision, then she heard a soft, startled laugh, barely a chuckle, and his shadow moved away from her. She heard the bedsprings creak on his cot.

An hour passed. Darcy made considerable progress on revising her paper and switched over to highlighting important passages in one of her books. Unfortunately, she’d started highlighting on one page, and then just kept highlighting until she realized she’d highlighted three paragraphs—well, they were important paragraphs!—and forced herself to stop before she ran out of ink. As she pulled out a pencil to scribble a note in the margin of the book, she saw that shadow in her peripheral vision again. Darcy continued scribbling, undeterred.

“What is it you’re reading?” The words were said with calculated indifference.

“It’s for my online course. Political Science.” She held up the book so he could read the title.

“’Political Science’?”

“Yeah, that’s my major; it’s like the study of government and stuff, policies, politics. Hey, you’d probably be into it,” she said. “There’s a lot about how to govern people. I’m taking Advanced Political Theory while I intern with Jane,” she explained.

“I don’t need _Midgardian_ theories on how to rule,” Loki sneered.

“Yeah, well, _Asgardian_ theories didn’t work out so well, did they?” said Darcy mildly. Loki’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. Darcy ignored him. “If you ask me, hostile takeover was not the way to go about seizing control.”

“Nobody asked you,” Loki said, but Darcy plowed on like she hadn’t heard him.

“The problem with wanting to rule the whole Earth is that right now there isn’t a whole Earth to rule,” said Darcy, idly doodling in the margins of her book. “We’re split up into so many different countries—196 countries, it’s kind of overwhelming when you think of it—so it just adds more work onto your plate. Like, you beat all the armies, right?, and then you still have to deal with 196 different countries saying, ‘But this,’ ‘But that.’ 

“I mean, and Dictatorships are just destined to topple, you know?” Darcy continued blithely. “The problem is, you have a territory governed under martial law, so you’ve already got a high probability of citizens mounting a revolution. Especially since the citizens weren’t the ones to _pick_ the dictator. Then there’s the fact that you’ve got the whole thing run by _one person_ , which is very vulnerable, you could topple the whole government with one assassination and!” Darcy held up a finger. “Susceptible to personal failure. Say, if the dictator doesn’t get enough sleep one night and makes a decision not to divert funds to, I don’t know, _grain_ or something, and then at the end of the harvest, uh-oh, not enough grain! It’s just not feasible in the long-term, and it leads to a lot of unnecessary loss of life.” Darcy looked up from her doodling and saw Loki watching her as if she was a dog that had learned to talk. “What?”

“Humans,” he began, much more calmly, “are made to be ruled—“

“Yeah, I heard your speech on TV, and you don’t know much about humans if you thought that would win us over.”

“I don’t need to _win you over,_ you just need to do as you’re told.”

“Well, _good luck with that,_ buddy,” Darcy scoffed disdainfully. “Humans don’t like being told what to do. We would fight you every single step of the way, and you’d wind up ruling the, like, five humans left on Earth who didn’t mind being told what to do. And you’d have to give ‘em lobotomies to get ‘em like that.”

Loki’s face formed into something horrible and menacing. He was leaning so far forward his nose was almost touching the glass. “It is my _right._ ”

“So what? I have the right to drive a gigantic smoke-spewing, gas-guzzling SUV, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to do that. Anyway,” she sniffed, calming herself down. “Who says you’ve got the right to be King of Earth?”

“My lineage—“

“Yeah, you’re king of somewhere else, but not _Earth._ Earth doesn’t have a King. You can’t just show up and scare the shit out of people and say ‘I’m the boss,’ it’s not sustainable. Wait…” Darcy realized something suddenly. “You don’t even want to sustain it, do you? Thor said—“

At this, Loki scoffed and walked away, kicking his chair.

“He said when he was in New Mexico that you took over Asgard,” said Darcy, undeterred. “That’s what this is all about, right? Get power on Earth, sneak in sideways to steal Asgard. Right?” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Loki, his back still towards her, quite deliberately unclenched his fists and and then clasped his hands behind his back. Turning, he said coolly, “If you’re quite finished.”

Darcy threw up her hands. “Whatever, you’re not going to listen to me; I’m just an ant or something.” She closed her laptop and calmly started putting things back into her bag. Then she picked up her Advanced Political Theory book and crossed to the food slot. “Here.” She looked at him. “Take your pie, I don’t want to squash it.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m lending you my book.”

“I don’t want your book,” he said, slowly and clearly.

“Come on, it’s a distraction. Your cell looks totally boring. You can tell me how stupid it is next time I visit.”

“Nothing is compelling you to come here.”

Darcy rolled her eyes and smiled, and the look of mild shock on Loki’s face was something she wanted to frame. “Please, who else is gonna bring you pie?”

He stared at her.

“Loki, take your pie!” she said sharply, exasperated. Moving almost mechanically, he obeyed, and Darcy fitted the book into the food slot, which was fortunately just wide enough to allow the textbook through. She picked up her bag and the bakery box and turned to him. He looked surreal standing there holding his paper plate. “Eat your pie,” she admonished, pointing a stern finger at him. He blinked at her as she walked away.


	3. Conflict

“I got in hella trouble for giving you my book, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the SHIELD people cornered me as soon as I walked out yesterday and told me how it was ‘unauthorized’ and they wouldn’t let me come back and I said ‘Regular prisons have libraries’ and they said that this wasn’t a regular jail and I told them that that’s why _I_ gave you a book, and they said that it was supposed to be punishment so I told them the punishment is that you can’t leave, like it’s not like you could go out and buy yourself a coffee if you wanted to, and anyway long story short—“

“Too late,” murmured Loki.

“They said you could keep the book. But now I need it back.”

Darcy had had to return to the cell sooner than she’d planned to, since her teacher for her online course had decided to randomly sling another assignment their way. Apparently the ten-page paper wasn’t enough. Jane had given her the afternoon off, against her better judgment. Darcy and Loki had just spent a happy half-hour—okay, a not-shouty half-hour—well, okay, a not- _angry_ -shouty half-hour—discussing various concepts from her textbook. Loki now relinquished her textbook in exchange for copies of _The Prince, The Communist Manifesto,_ and several history books that Darcy was still hanging onto from a course she took in freshman year. 

“Did they give you books and things in Asgard prison?” 

“No. I had some comforts that my—I had some comforts, but no books.” Loki was sitting in his chair looking like a giant spider in terrible prison clothing, all lanky and long-limbed. In his hand was a chocolate chip cookie held in a paper napkin—Darcy hadn’t had time to make it to that awesome pie shop today.

“I’ll take requests for different books if you want—I didn’t really know what you’d like, but I thought the history ones at least would be a good start.”

“Ah, but there’s no guarantee I will read them,” said Loki with a smirk. Smartass. At least he seemed to be keeping a tighter handle on his temper.

Darcy swallowed the last bite of her cookie, and then gestured at his. “I’ll eat that if you’re not going to.”

Loki blinked at the cookie as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. 

“Unless you’re holding onto it like a security blanket,” grinned Darcy.

“It’s of great comfort to me,” said Loki with a dry smile.

“Hey, so I was wondering,” Darcy said, trying to sound casual. “Why’d you try to kill me?”

Loki’s brow creased. “Kill you?”

“Yeah, two years ago.” Darcy brushed cookie crumbs off the table into her hand. “I was there when Thor first touched down in New Mexico. You sent that big fiery metal dude to lay waste to the town.”

“You were there?”

“You probably don’t remember ‘cause you were so busy trying to kill your brother.”

“He’s not my brother,” said Loki.

“Man, whatever, your _adopted_ brother,” Darcy said. “He’s still your brother.”

“He’s _not_ —“

“Family’s family!” Darcy cut him off. “And don’t change the subject!”

Loki glowered at her. “Which is?”

“Why you tried to kill me."

There was a pause and then Loki said, “What’s one more human life?”

“All right.” Darcy stood. “That’s it. Give me the cookie.” She pointed at the food slot.

Confused at the non-sequitur, he said, “What?”

“Your cookie privileges are rescinded,” she said, stern. “Also, you’re not eating it, so I want it.”

Smirking, Loki lifted the cookie, in its greased-stained napkin, to his lips and took an enormous bite of it.

“Ugh,” said Darcy, laughing. “Now it’s got all cooties on it.” Loki narrowed his eyes at her, suspicious, but before he could say anything Darcy announced, “Welp, I’m out for the day!” She picked up her bag. “I promised Jane I’d go out with her tonight to take some spectro-something readings.” And Loki watched with raised eyebrows as Darcy darted out of the room.

***

“I got him to eat a cookie today,” Darcy told Thor, who had joined her and Jane for their outing, and who had successfully convinced Jane to give up on it and go out for burgers. “I think it helps when I don’t take his ‘kill-all-humans’ bullshit seriously.” Thor clapped an encouraging hand on her shoulder.

***

Darcy didn’t push her luck. She’d visit Loki in his underground cell two or three times a week, bring him books and bring him pie (which he now mostly ate, except for the lemon meringue, which apparently tasted like slugs). She didn’t bring up any of his villainous activities again; she stuck to (mostly) innocuous topics. They’d talk about Asgardian versus Midgardian customs, or discuss the books that she’d lent him. What happened most of the time was that Darcy would make some reference in an off-hand comment (“Dude, you are totally Looney Toons!”) and they would go off on a tangent until Darcy felt she’d explained it well enough. Oftentimes she would pull out her laptop to show him pictures or videos to illustrate.

They’d frequently play the game of try-to-shut-the-other-person-up. He didn’t try shouting at her again, since clearly that didn’t work, so he tried high-handed condescension. Darcy let him keep trying with that one; she’d spent most of her life being talked down to, so it didn’t really faze her anymore. 

She did manage to shut him up once, though. They were bickering about dictatorships again, and somehow they went from talking about Stalin and Napoleon Bonaparte to talking about Hitler, and yeah, the Holocaust. Which really ought to silence anyone. ‘What a waste,’ Loki had said, and she didn’t ask if he was thinking of humans as people in that moment, or as cattle. That was something she really didn’t want to know.

A few weeks passed, and it became more and more difficult for Darcy not to bring up something Loki had said to other people in her life. Thor was the only one who didn’t mind hearing about Loki—though he always had this kind of pained look on his face after. Darcy could tell that Thor really, really missed his brother, the way he’d been before.

Most of the time, Darcy didn’t think too much about what her visits with Loki meant. She’d decided on a course of action, and now she was going to pursue it. Every once in awhile, though, she’d see Erik walking around in his kilts, and see the haunted look in his eyes—or she’d see one of the many, many construction sites still filling Manhattan—and she’d question herself. Why was she spending so much of her off-time hanging out with a convicted criminal? This was a guy who’d tried to kill her and her friends, who had screwed with Dr. Selvig’s brain.

But then she’d look at Thor, who would look sad in unguarded moments, and she’d think about how prisoners were supposed to have rights in the United States, and if SHIELD wasn’t going to give someone who was clearly mentally ill access to a real therapist, then by god Darcy was going to bring that prisoner pie.

***

SHIELD had not been entirely stupid about the selection of the guards on Loki’s cell: they had specifically chosen people who had no serious grudges against him. It had apparently required the relocation of four different SHIELD agents, but all the guards she’d spoken to had said they’d gotten a really great pay raise for moving, and that Loki wasn’t such a terrible prisoner, especially since he’d stopped throwing things around. One of the guards, Joe, had even taken it upon himself to bring in a tennis ball for Loki. “Gives him something to do with his hands,” explained Joe. “When I’m thinking, I like to throw a tennis ball up against the side of the house—this guy’s got some issues to work out,” he’d said, chucking a thumb in the direction of the cell.

This afternoon Loki had the tennis ball in hand and he was bouncing it repeatedly against the plexiglass stuff on the front of his cell. The plexiglass made an angry _bzzzz!_ noise every time the ball hit it.

“How old are you?” asked Darcy, feet propped on the little table, chair tilted back.

“I’ve lost track,” said Loki. 

“You totally haven’t."

“All right,” he allowed. “Somewhere near 1,000 of your years.”

“Hunh. Lookin’ good for it.”

Loki smirked at her. She stuck her tongue out at him. _Thock! Bzzz! Thock! Bzzz!_ went the tennis ball.

“How long do Asgardians live, anyway?”

“I am not Asgardian,” he said, and threw the ball especially hard. _THOCK! BZZZzzz…_ “But the All-Father is one of the oldest of their kind, and he is somewhere near 4,000 years old.”

“Dayumn.”

“I’m told my kind—“

“Frost giants,” Darcy filled in helpfully.

“—have comparable lifespans. It is only Midgardians who live such miniscule lives.” He sneered, but his heart wasn’t in it. _Thock! Bzzz!_

“Yeah, but we—wait…” Darcy swung her legs off the table and the chair hit the floor with a _thump._ “So you’re like a quarter of your dad’s age?”

“ _Not_ my father.” _THOCK!_

“Whatever. But he’s gettin’ up there, right?”

“Someday, child, you will learn a lesson about tact.”

Darcy snorted. “Fat chance of that. But, listen, okay: humans can live like up to a hundred years. So someone who’s twenty-five, like me, has lived a quarter of that lifetime. So…” Darcy stood, grinning, and bounced on her toes, pointing at Loki. “You’re my age!”

_Thock! Bzzz!_ “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m over 950 years older than you.” _Thock! Bzzz!_

“But you’ve lived the same percentage of your life as I have! This whole time I’ve been thinking you had a mid-life crisis, but you’re just a kid, like me!”

_Thock! Bzzz! Whap!,_ the ball slapped into Loki’s hand. “You’ve always told me that you’re not a child, although your argument for this is specious.”

“Hey, I’m old enough to rent a car. That makes me a grownup,” argued Darcy. “Except I’m not, really,” she ceded. “I mean, I’m a non-trad in college, but I’m still _in_ college. And twenty-somethings—we’re all still figuring stuff out, especially nowadays. I mean, the current job market…” Darcy forcefully stopped herself from going off on a tangent. “But you are. You’re the same age as me.”

“I have ten of your lifetimes’ worth of experiences.”

“But developmentally, we’re totally the same age.”

“It seems you are not going to listen to my arguments to the contrary.”

***

“How nice is Joe?!” cried Darcy as she walked in one day.

“Who is ‘Joe’?” Loki asked, looking up from a copy of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ that Darcy still had hanging around from some lit course.

“Your _guard,_ numbnuts." Darcy rolled her eyes. “The one who gave you the tennis ball?”

“Oh. Yes. Very nice.” Loki turned back to his book.

“He brought you pie,” said Darcy, picking up one of two Tupperware containers.

A look of confusion. “ _You_ bring me pie.”

“Yeah, and now Joe brought you some, too, so you have to be nice to him, that’s the rule.”

“I’m not nice to you.”

“Ehhh,” shrugged Darcy. She opened the lid of the Tupperware and slid it through the food slot, _ka-chunk_.

Loki went to investigate. “This is…meat pie.”

Darcy popped the lid on hers open and inhaled deeply of the delicious scent within, closing her eyes blissfully. “Mmmmmm. I know. Joe’s mom made it. _So_ nice of him to share it. Way better than those store-bought pies I bring you.”

“I like the pies you bring me,” said Loki.

Darcy tried not to act like this was a major concession on his part. “Well, Joe’s mom baked this pie with love. Also with beef and venison. Apparently Joe’s dad hunts.”

They both dug in their plastic utensils and sampled their first bites. Darcy had to sit down. Loki was clearly trying to remain impassive in the face of one of the tastiest pies on the planet.

“I’m serious, you have to be _so_ nice to Joe after this.”

“I make no promises,” said Loki, but Darcy could tell he was fibbing.

When Darcy had finished food-gasming over the meat pie, she dug into her bag. "I brought you a present!”

“In addition to the pie? You spoil me.”

“The pie is from Joe’s mom, I just explained this—“

“Do you think she knows that he gave some of the pie to a dangerous criminal?”

“—and I really do spoil you, you’re the most spoiled supervillain ever.”

“I find you irritating,” he said unconvincingly around a bite of pie.

“Please, I brought you takeout from that Thai place the other day, I’m your favorite human in humanland,” she said dismissively, and then waved the gift in his face. “Look! Present! I borrowed my friend Markie’s iPad.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a teeny-weeny computer! I’m not allowed to put it in the cell with you, sorry," she collected Loki’s Tupperware as he _ka-chunk_ ed it back through the food slot, “but I brought…” she dug in her bag again. “Duct tape! To hold it up on the glass.” She held the roll aloft. “I thought you might like to watch a movie or something. I can’t really hang out for real tonight; I have to finish my end-of-term paper for my class.”

“What happens at the end of the term?” said Loki.

“Ummm, well, I go home for Hanukkah tomorrow morning—I told you about that holiday, everyone else does Christmas and my family does Christmas-y Hanukkah—and then I head back down to Virginia for a couple weeks to do my Winter Study course, and then back here to work with Jane." She was looking forward to the ‘working with Jane’ part. She’d be doing her final online course before graduating(!), and at the same time Jane’s lab would be officially moving into Stark Tower, and they would be on Stark Industries’ Payroll, which meant—drumroll please—Darcy would be getting paid for her work! “So, yeah, I’ll be gone like three weeks.”

“Oh,” said Loki blankly.

Darcy studied Loki for a moment, taking in the carefully-hidden crestfallen look, the slumped shoulders, and his posture in the banged-up metal chair. There was some prime teasing material, here. But Darcy was just going to have to bite the bullet and be the bigger woman. “So, I, uh, I brought you an assload of books,” she said, trying to force cheerfulness into her voice, unloading the books onto the table. “We’re nearing the dregs of my personal collection, so I’ll hit up the library when I get back, you lucky bastard. And, uh…Joe said he’d be cool with coming in to talk to you, if you wanted.”

“I don’t require human pity,” said Loki, reminding Darcy of her first visit here. Only this time he just seemed sort of defeated.

“It’s not pity,” she said quietly, dropping the chipper act. “It’s compassion.”

Loki met her eyes, and for the first time in a long time she saw a spark of that slightly unbalanced anger in him. “I don’t need. Compassion,” he bit out.

“Everyone needs compassion."

“I should have been more specific,” he sneered. “I don’t need _your_ compassion.”

“Because ‘mortal’ compassion isn’t good enough for you,” Darcy said, getting slightly riled in spite of herself. “You want some ‘immortal’ compassion, then? You’ve got it! I’ll send Thor in while I’m away!”

“Don’t mention his name here!” spat Loki, kicking his chair out from underneath him and rising to his full height.

“Why not?! So you can keep blaming him for shit that’s _your fault?!_ ” shouted Darcy. “He misses you _so much!_ He talks about you—all the time! Even when people don’t want to hear it! He’s still your brother! _So why aren’t you his?!_ ”

“You know _nothing,_ ” Loki said, low and angry. He stepped forward, as close as he could get to the glass wall, towering over Darcy.

Darcy stepped forward, glaring right into Loki’s eyes. “And you hurt people,” she said softly, furious. “You have hurt so many people. You’ve killed and hurt here on Earth—I _know_ people that you’ve hurt. And Thor told me what you did to Jotunheim.” Darcy’s hands clenched into fists. “And you tried to kill me. And it wasn’t even—anything personal. You would have just squashed me like a bug ‘cause I was in your way.” Darcy searched his eyes, his face, for anything other than anger. There was a strange and horrible silence, broken only by their ragged breathing.

Abruptly, she squared her jaw and disengaged with him, violently shoving the books back into her bag, her back to the cell. “Fuck it,” she muttered. “Why am I WASTING my time with you? I need to go work on my paper!” she yelled over her shoulder at him. “I have more _important_ things to do than listen to some _asshole_ tell me I’m not good enough to give a shit about him!”

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she stormed towards the exit. Loki slammed the heel of his hand against the transparent barrier as she flew by him. When she reached the doorway to the guardroom she heard the loud clattering that signaled the further destruction of his chair. Darcy punched the button to open the door much harder than was necessary.

“Everything okay?” asked Joe, rising from his seat.

“Oh, yeah, everything’s GREAT!” hollered Darcy. “But whatever you do, don’t show any COMPASSION to that DICKHEAD in there!” she screamed in the direction of the cell, her whole body tense with anger. An enormous crash—probably the cot—answered her. Darcy stopped, breathing hard. “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said, after a minute. She dug the Tupperware containers out of her bag, deliberately forcing her shoulders to relax as she did so. “Thank you again for the pie. I may or may not be seeing you in three weeks.” Her shoulders twitched again when there was further crashing and banging from the other room.

“Hey,” said Joe, surging forward and grabbing her hand once she’d dropped the containers on the counter. Joe’s sweet brown eyes caught hers and he gazed solemnly at her, hanging onto her hand from over the counter. “It’s a good thing you’re doing.”

“Is it?” Darcy laughed bitterly.

“It is,” Joe insisted, and kept holding her hand with both of his, even though the position was awkward for both of them. “I worked in a corrections facility before I went into SHIELD.” He released her hand, and his hands went to his sides, but he maintained eye contact with her. “I dealt with a lot of real bad guys, killers, rapists. They’re bad people. But they’re still people.”

Darcy nodded, her jaw still clenched.

“Have a good holiday. I’ll see you in three weeks,” said Joe, and turned back to his clipboard. 

“Sure,” said Darcy, not sure at all. She made her way back through the many layers of security, out into the frigid New York evening, and hoped the chill air would help cool her rage.


	4. Resolution

Home for Darcy was easily accessible by train, fortunately, so she didn’t have to pay to rent a car or anything. She said very brief goodbyes to Jane, Thor, Erik, and her other friends in NYC—brief enough that she could pretend she was in a great mood. She kept her earbuds in the whole trip, and whenever she could feel thoughts intruding, she turned the volume up on her iPod.

Darcy moped around her parents' house for a few days, and told herself that she wasn’t moping, that she was just tired from all the work she’d been doing. Her mom and dad tried to draw her out by asking her questions about Jane and her work, about school, and about whether or not she’d been near that big atmospheric event in Greenwich while she was in England. Then they finally resorted to asking her questions about the current political mood (something that had never failed to get her talking in the past). Her mom asked a question about the Affordable Care Act that was specifically targeted to get Darcy angry, so that got her rolling for a little bit, but then—

“So what do you think about us imprisoning a terrorist menace here on Earth?” her dad said, settling in with a cup of tea, clearly ready to hear Darcy expound at length on her opinions. 

“Uh, I think it’s…um…” said Darcy, and then darted out of the room, saying she wasn’t feeling well.

It was her sister’s arrival that at least got her out of the house.

“DARCY!” Chelsea entered the room like she was on a SWAT team, by kicking the door open.

“GAH!” yelped Darcy, clutching tighter to the pillow she had been hugging. “Ah! Hi, Big Sis’!”

“Happy Chahnooooookah!” Chelsea dive-bombed her sister, flopping on top of her and pinning Darcy’s arms in a strange position.

“Urk,” said Darcy.

Chelsea sighed in contentment. “I missed you, Little Sis’. You’re so squishy and comfortable.”

“Off!” Darcy shoved her sister, laughing.

Chelsea sat up and faced her sister. “Mom and Dad said you’ve been sulking since you’ve been home.”

“I’m not sulking,” said Darcy sulkily.

Chelsea glanced around the room. “So you’ve got the shades drawn and your stuffed animals out because you’re in a _good_ mood.”

“I’ve just been feeling sick.” Darcy flapped her hand around a bit.

“Sick like how?” Chelsea clasped Darcy’s arms and examined her closely. “Sick like in high school?”

“No, no,” sighed Darcy. “Sick like…when people are stupid.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Just…people,” said Darcy. She slumped forward and crushed her face against the pillow in her arms, groaning.

“People are stupid,” Chelsea agreed gravely. “Anything I can do to help?”

“ _Mmmmph,_ ” said Darcy, and flailed her hands a bit. Chelsea patted her back, then announced,

“We—are going—BOWLING!”

“Noooooo!” cried Darcy dramatically, since that was always her line.

“YES!” Chelsea stood and dragged Darcy along with her. She posed heroically. “TO THE ALLEY!” She marched out of the room, Darcy struggling behind her.

Darcy told herself she wasn’t distracted, because that would be stupid of her, but she couldn’t seem to find words. This was distressing, since usually words were her strong point. So on the way to the bowling alley, she asked Chelsea about her new job, which got Chelsea chattering up a storm. Then they met up with a bunch of Chelsea’s friends to play a couple of games, and the friends and Chelsea pretty much carried on the conversation, and no one thought it was too weird if Darcy kept to herself. Except for Chelsea, who would occasionally shoot her worried glances—but she didn’t ask again.

Hanukkah was awkward, as usual. Her family only celebrated the first few nights, after which one of the sisters either left to go back to work or school, or they would just forget to light the candles. Darcy had scraped up some dough for some cutesy presents for her family, and they gave her some really awesome practical stuff (which was what Hanukkah was all about for them, really). It kinda dampened that Hanukkah spirit though, when her family was among those that hung up Christmas wreaths and drank eggnog.

The best part of being home, though, was that on the first night they were all together, Darcy’s mom would make latkes. Darcy would watch and try to absorb the recipe, but she tended to turn any food she tried to cook inedible, so she stayed on the sidelines. She would sit on a stool near the counter, sipping wine while her mother cooked, and occasionally her mom would shove potatoes into her hands and instruct her to peel or grate them. Darcy’s sister and father would sit in the living room watching Wheel of Fortune and yelling incongruous solutions at the screen.

It was peaceful. It was home. Darcy felt a little more like herself after that.

Then she was back in Virginia at Culver for Winter Study, which was an intensive course that lasted a little over two weeks. She didn’t have time for too much brooding, what with one four-hour class session a day followed by three hours’ worth of homework. Not everyone did a Winter Study every year, but those friends that Darcy did have on campus would gather after they’d finished their homework and find somewhere to go and talk about things that weren’t school. 

One evening Darcy cornered her friend Jaclyn, who was the only psych major she knew who was presently on campus, and asked if she could pick her brains about psychotic breaks.

“Also about sociopaths. Like, how you recognize if someone is one,” said Darcy darkly.

Jaclyn went on at length about sociopaths (until it became clear that Loki wasn’t one; he was just an asshole) and psychotic breaks (until it became really clear that that was probably the best diagnosis she, as an entirely inexperienced layman, was going to make), until Darcy finally asked her,

“But how would you, like, treat someone who had a psychotic break?”

“Um, well, I’ve only really studied the theory. Treatments are covered more fully in the Master’s program.”

“But what would _you_ do?” pressed Darcy.

“Um,” Jaclyn said again, a little nervous at being put on the spot. “I would…probably…I would want to make sure the sufferer was put in a familiar environment, and let them know they’re safe.”

“But what if you can’t do that?” Darcy said, frustrated.

“I, um, I…don’t know. I’m sorry, Darcy. My brain’s fried from all this studying.”

“No, it’s okay,” sighed Darcy. “Sorry I pushed you.”

“Is this about someone specific?”

“Nooooo…” said Darcy unconvincingly, and begged off, claiming she had to work on her final presentation.

On the train ride back to NYC, Darcy gave in and finally let herself think about what she’d told herself she wasn’t thinking about, and gnashed her teeth the whole trip. Upon arrival, she hefted her giant duffel bag and slogged her way through the subway system to go straight to SHIELD. Joe was on duty, and he smiled knowingly (and a bit proudly) at her as she walked in.

“Don’t you start,” she said, smiling at him and dropping her duffel.

When she walked in, the cell looked empty. As she got farther into the room, she found Loki sprawled on the floor, up against the wall closest to the door. They looked at each other, then both simultaneously looked away, avoiding eye contact for a minute or two.

“So,” said Darcy finally, hooking her hands into her coat pockets.

“They took my chair,” said Loki, gazing at her beseechingly.

“That’s what happens when you pitch a tantrum and throw it around like a five-year-old.”

A pause, and then they both started to speak at the same time.

“Sorry,” said Darcy. “Go ahead. You first.”

Loki’s eyes pleaded with her to speak before he did—his pride plainly would not allow him to say it out loud, though.

“Fine,” sighed Darcy melodramatically. “I think we should set some ground rules. The first and most important one being that you don’t get to bitch about me—you know, being here. And in exchange, I will continue to bring you delicious desserts and various other…foodstuffs.” She shifted awkwardly, glancing to the side, hands still in her pockets. Finally, she turned her eyes back to him. She saw him swallow and then he said, hoarsely,

“Agreed.”

“Good,” she said. She cleared her throat. “With that in mind, I have a, uh, a little belated Hanukkah gift for you.” His face fell like someone had just shot him in the heart. She couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle. “No, it’s—my family, we do mostly practical gifts—here,” she drew a roll of paper out of one of her jacket pockets. “I picked it up at a poster store on the way back.”

She unrolled it for him and held it closer to the glass so he could read it. The poster had a drawing of a cartoony shark with its mouth open, and it read _THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK._

Loki stared at it for a long moment, and then started laughing, genuinely and quietly, shoulders shaking helplessly. Darcy glanced at the poster in her hands and grinned broadly, flooded with relief.

“I’ll—hold on—I’ll get some tape, lemme see if Joe has tape,” said Darcy, ducking out of the room. Joe did, in fact, have a roll of scotch tape, from which Darcy liberated two short pieces. 

The plexiglass stuff felt buzzy against Darcy’s hands as she affixed the poster to it at a little above her eye level, facing it into the cell.

“I didn’t get you anything,” said Loki from the floor, still smiling.

She rolled her eyes, “Of course you didn’t, you ass.”

Without further ado, she plonked herself down on the floor outside the cell just opposite Loki, crossing her legs. 

“Are you…testing the density of the floor?” he asked. The floor of the cell was a little raised off the ground, so he was looking down at her—for once, not in a condescending way.

“No,” said Darcy in the same tone. “I said ground _rules,_ plural, so here is another one.” She paused for so long trying to work out how to phrase it that Loki asked,

“Do you wish me to guess?”

As if he hadn’t spoken, Darcy finally said, “I know I’m nosy. Not a lot of people like it. But I’m probably gonna keep on being nosy. I do have questions that I want to ask you. But I know it bugged you that I got up in your personal business before I left” –understatement of the _year_ —“so, this is what I think I’ve figured out. If I ask you something that you think is too personal, you can ask me something personal, too.”

A pause, and then, “Wouldn’t the better solution be to not ask me anything personal?”

“Don’t you listen? I just said I’m gonna ask anyway! Look, I’m gonna keep poking you about stuff, so rather than screaming at each other, we can just make it an equal exchange. Truth for truth.”

“How do you know I’ll tell the truth?” said Loki with that smart-assed grin.

“Because you’re about to promise that you will,” Darcy said, trying not to let on how nervous she was.

Loki held her gaze for a long moment. “I could tell you I promise and then lie to you anyway.”

Darcy chewed on the inside of her lip, not breaking eye contact.

“Why should I want to hear your truths? What interest would they hold for me?”

Slowly, Darcy raised her hand and pointed up above her head to the poster she’d just hung. Loki glanced at the poster, a hint of a smile around his eyes. “You promise?” prompted Darcy.

“…Yes.”


	5. Questions

Unpacking Jane’s lab equipment in the new digs at Stark Tower was extremely frustrating.

“No, let me handle that one!” said Jane for what seemed like the millionth time, pulling a piece of science equipment carefully from Darcy’s hands.

Darcy held her hands up in surrender. “Okay! I’ll uh--open this one for you.” She searched about her for a box cutter, but there wasn’t one to be found. Pulling out her keys, Darcy gouged at the tape on top of the box. Jane and Erik had wrapped things _really_ thoroughly; the tape was at least eight layers thick. Ineffectually, Darcy scrabbled at the ends of the tape. “Jaaaane,” she whined.

“Sorry,” said Jane with an apologetic grimace. “Coffee run?”

“Sure,” shrugged Darcy. She looked around. “Hey, where’s Thor? Thought he’d be around today.”

“Uhhh,” Jane stalled. She busied herself with pulling some packing material from a box.

“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?”

Jane cleared her throat and moved away. Darcy followed.

“You guys have a fight?

“Darcy, we’ve talked about personal boundaries—“ Jane began, before crashing into the solid wall of muscle named Thor. “Oh!” She looked up at him. “I, uh, didn’t you say you wouldn’t be here today?” Jane tucked her hair behind her ear and ducked away from the doorway, struggling to open another box on a nearby lab bench.

“I am sorry, Jane,” said Thor, and stood aside to reveal _another solid wall of muscle_. Darcy tried not to drool. “Captain Rogers wished to see the lab.”

“We can come back later if it’s a problem,” said Captain-freaking-America.

Darcy immediately stepped forward to shake his hand, smiling like a shark. “Not a problem, not a problem at all, Captain.”

“Thor!” said Jane in a harsh whisper. He turned her way. “Come over here, _now_.” Shooting a sad puppy look in Darcy’s direction, Thor trooped off to the corner to have a whisper-yell discussion with Jane.

“Hey,” said Darcy, who was still holding onto the Captain’s hand. “Let me show you all the science stuff.”

***

“I have the first question I wanna ask you,” said Darcy, spearing a pork dumpling with her plastic fork.

“I’m all ears,” Loki said, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Darcy mock-glared at him. “You promised.”

“Yes, I promised,” said Loki with an eyeroll that clearly indicated ‘all your mortal games are beneath me.’ Which led Darcy to her question.

“Why are you so racist?”

Loki blinked hard. “What?”

“Do you get it from your parents or what? Like, were you brought up racist?”

“In what way am I--?”

“You’ve called me a bug. And you spout all this crap about how ‘humans are to be ruled,’ like we’re supposed to be your slaves or something, like we would _like_ that. It’s the same bullshit line that white slave owners used, basically.”

Picking up his container of lo mein, Loki tried to hide behind his food and chopsticks, brave warrior that he was. 

“Also?” said Darcy. “Jane said your dad called her a goat.”

“He’s not my father,” Loki muttered around a mouthful of noodles.

“But he raised you, right? Did he raise you to think that humans are goats?”

Loki swallowed his lo mein. “I don’t like this question.”

“Tough noogies. All my other ones are a lot worse. Anyway, you get to ask your own after this, don’t forget.”

“Fath—Odin would tell us stories of the other realms, yes. Humans’ lives are so—fleeting. It is little wonder you aren’t thought of as learned,” he said with half a sneer. “You don’t have time to get up to speed.”

“Well, that’s just bigoted and dumb,” she said, reaching for another dumpling.

“Naturally you would think so.”

“Just ‘cause we live shorter lives than you doesn’t mean we’re _stupid_ or _animals_. That’s like a housefly that lives a week going up to a housefly that lives 24 hours and saying ‘I’m a better fly than you ‘cause I’ve had time to learn all kinds of fly things like where to find the best garbage.’”

Mouth open, Loki stared at her, at a loss. Suddenly he chortled, then snorted and tried to cover it up by going back to his takeout container. It really was criminal how deftly he handled a pair of plastic chopsticks, considering he’d never held any until 20 minutes previous.

“You know what I’m saying, though,” Darcy persisted. “But you’re not just bigoted against humans—Thor—“ Loki made a little hissing noise, “—said your parents told you all kinds of crap about Yogurts.”

He blinked. “Jotunn, you mean?”

“Yeah, the Yogurt-guys. Frost Giants.”

“This is more than one question.”

“This is a _continuation_ of the original question of why you’re such a racist jerkwad.”

Setting his container of noodles aside, Loki said, “The children of Asgard are told stories of the wicked Frost Giants at bedtime. The Jotunn are monsters.”

“But you’re one,” she pointed out.

Loki gestured around him at the cell.

“No, but,” said Darcy, frustratedly waving her fork in the air, “you were just a normal dude until a couple of years ago. Right? Thor said you were totally normal.”

“Not…exactly.”

“Why, what? Were you into something weird? Like…I dunno, bathing in pudding or something?”

He chose to ignore this. “None of the other warriors of Asgard pursue magic. It isn’t considered particularly…masculine.”

“Don’t make me go all feminist on you.” Darcy had made sure Loki was exposed to at least three books on feminism.

Loki held up his hands as if to ward her off. “I obviously do not consider it beneath me. Again—“ He gestured around himself at the cell.

“Yeah, yeah, magic-proof cell. So, what, you’re like the _only_ guy who does magic?”

“Not the _only_ —“

“Ha!”

“But one of the very, very few, yes,” he finished. “And I am also more reserved than most Asgardians. You may have noticed. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah,” laughed Darcy. Thor and his buddies were definitely what you'd call _exuberant_. “Are those the only differences, though?”

“For the most part.”

“But any ‘Frost Giant-y’ stuff you did was, like, only _after_ you found out you were one.” Darcy leveled a shrewd gaze at him. “I’m right, right?” Loki raised his eyebrows. “I’m totally right. You found out you were supposed to be part of a ‘monster’ species, so you did all ‘monster’ stuff. _Racist,_ ” she said, in conclusion of her argument, and reached for another takeout box. “You want one?” Darcy held up a chicken finger.

Loki waved dismissively. “It’s my turn, yes?”

“Ask away!” she said, and took a messy bite. Darcy saw chicken fingers primarily as vehicles for duck sauce.

Loki steepled his fingers like a proper supervillain, thinking for a moment. “You’re very forward.”

“So I’m told,” she said, brightly.

“Why?”

“That’s your question? Why am I so ‘forward’?”

“Yes.”

Darcy shoved the rest of her chicken finger into her face and chewed thoughtfully. Finally, she swallowed and said, “I’m not really sure.”

“If you can’t answer,” he said, spreading his hands.

“I’ll answer, I’ll answer, just gimme a minute.” Darcy traced out a pattern on the table with her fingertips. “I think it started when I was a kid.” Her tone was unusually somber. “Nobody listens when you’re a kid, you know? And people kept not listening all the way through high school, and I just got more and more fed up with it. But I’m short, and busty, and nobody would take me seriously.” Darcy chewed on her lower lip. “So I started wearing baggier clothes,” she gestured at her present outfit, a loose-fitting tee under a cardigan, “and I tried for shock value. 

“The habit just kinda stuck, I guess,” she shrugged. “And everyone expects me to just blurt out whatever I want, so I do. People still don’t listen, really, but…why filter? It saves a lot of time in the long run.”

“One might make an argument for tact."

“Why bother?” Darcy pushed her glasses up her nose. “Everyone tunes out what I’m saying anyway.” She avoided his eyes, then cleared her throat and said, “Fortune cookie time!”

There was a brief flurry of movement as Darcy tidied up boxes and made the exchange through the cell’s food slot. Loki picked up the little plastic packet.

“You open it up and break your cookie and it has a little fortune inside,” explained Darcy, yanking the plastic open on hers. 

“To what purpose?”

“I dunno, fun?”

He fumbled a little with the plastic wrapper, and then when he tried to break his cookie he pulled too hard and it broke into a bunch of fragments in his hand. Finally, he extracted his fortune. “ _Chinese for ‘dog,’_ ” he read, bewildered.

“No, no, the other side,” said Darcy, munching her cookie.

Loki flipped the little slip of paper. “ _If you don’t give something, you will not get anything._ What do we gain from these?”

“It’s traditional or whatever.” She fished her fortune from the remains of the cookie, read it, then paused a millisecond before saying, “Mine says, _Help! I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory!_ ” 

“No it doesn’t."

“How would you know?” She made a face at him. He made a face back. Looking down at the fortune, she read to herself, _Good things take time_. 

***

Time passed. Joe started joining Darcy for hangouts outside of Loki’s cell, and the three of them would chat and occasionally (when Joe’s mother was in town) share amazing home-cooked meals. Laura, the weekend guard, would intermittently come in and talk super-secret-retired spy stuff, since her idea of retirement (apparently) was to babysit an extraterrestrial criminal. Darcy continued to provide takeout and pies and it stopped putting such in a crimp in her budget now that she was being paid for her internship, courtesy of Stark Industries, and was no longer living off scholarship money and what she’d saved up from her summer job.

(At one point Darcy mentioned how expensive this one Indian restaurant was, and Loki asked if she was spending her own money on all this food, and Darcy said, _Yeah, so you better be grateful, you butthole,_ and then Loki was really quiet the rest of the afternoon.)

As promised, Darcy started visiting the public library for further reading material for Loki ( _Because I am the nicest ever,_ Darcy told him), who started branching out from political science and history. He requested some books on Midgardian science, which prompted Darcy to go to the ‘Science’ section of the Dewey Decimal System and pull random books off the shelves. Eventually, Loki started requesting books on specific sciences, at which point Darcy went to Jane, who provided a huge stack of back-dated science journals and a number of old textbooks whose titles Darcy thought may actually be in another language. 

Of course Loki plowed through these with voracious attention, prompting Darcy to call him a nerd. This required her to explain the definition of ‘nerd,’ which was surprisingly difficult to do. Loki had a theory that Asgardian and Midgardian science had similar roots but had branched off in different directions. He implied that Midgardian science was primitive and pathetic compared to magic and said that he’d like to read some books about computer science now. Darcy figured it was progress that he was at least interested.

That led to a brief battle with Director Fury about whether to provide those or not, but Darcy argued that it wasn’t like they’d given Loki a computer, like what was he gonna do? How would he hack into SHIELD’s security systems from inside of an impenetrable cell? Fury made a number of other arguments against it, but Darcy had obstinacy on her side.

The questions game continued. Darcy kept prodding to find out the logic behind Loki’s delusions, and Loki was evidently trying to figure out what the hell made Darcy tick.

Darcy: “Why did you lie about your dad being dead?”

Loki: “Why can’t you mind your own business?”

“Why’d you try to kill your brother?”

“Aren’t you ever terrified of your own mortality?”

“What happened after you fell?” _Very bad things,_ Darcy found out. Very painful, horrible torturous things about which Loki would not go into much detail, preferring instead to wax rhapsodical about his newfound purpose to rule Earth until Darcy threatened to never bring him another black-and-white cookie ever again.

“What is it you hope to accomplish in your” (‘miniscule’ was implied here) “life?”

“Tell me about your mom” was met with a silence so charged with rage that Darcy begged off and went home, and next time asked the comparatively inoffensive question of “What’s it feel like when you do magic?”

After various attempts by Loki to answer this supposedly very challenging question (‘If you can’t do it yourself, it’s not something you’re going to understand’), Darcy tried to interrogate an explanation out of him until he cried out in frustration,

“ _Why are you here?!_ ” which was, of course, what he’d really been trying to figure out all this time.

Darcy took a deep breath, fiddling with the sleeves of her sweater, and said, “Two years ago I walked in on my cousin tying a bed sheet around her neck. She had the other end tied to a light fixture, and she was standing on her bed, and…” She pushed her glasses up her nose, and then returned to fiddling with her sweater. “I knew she’d been really hurting ever since her fiancé split up with her—they were together for _six years_ , and he went behind her back with someone else—but I thought she’d been improving, you know? But she’d written this really...heartbreaking note…” A pause. She took another breath. “You probably think this is all really childish or whatever, but…”

“What did you do?”

A long pause, and then Darcy looked up with a weak smile. “I brought her pie.”


	6. Celebrations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a great deal of very mature humor, including fart jokes. You have been warned.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, Jane was continuing her research in a shiny new laboratory, and Darcy continued assisting her (though it was no longer for college credit—she’d fulfilled that science requirement before they’d even left New Mexico). 

Erik mooched around in utili-kilts, muttering to himself and feverishly taking notes. Erik, in fact, had his own research that he was meant to be working on, but he seemed to have glommed onto Jane as a center for his sanity, and no one was much interested in seeing what happened if Jane were to kick him out.

Thor and Steve (omg Captain America!) would hang out around the lab a bunch and try to figure out the modern world together, which was frequently both adorable and hilarious. Honestly, it was better than the best sitcom Darcy had ever watched. It was only her common sense and vague fear of repercussions from SHIELD that prevented her from videotaping that shit and putting it on YouTube.

Thor and Jane would alternately fight or be soppy stupid puppies-in-love with each other, which was also fairly entertaining to observe.

And Darcy moved into her own apartment! She considered it the crowning victory of her adult life so far. It wasn’t much of an apartment, but whatever. It was a one-bedroom. Okay, it was a studio. No, all right, it was a bed-sit.

So it was basically a closet with a bed and a tiny one-burner stovetop in it, with a shared bathroom down the hall. But it was hers, dammit! A few days after she moved in, Darcy proudly held up a picture on her cell phone for Loki to admire, and he’d looked at her as though _she_ was the crazy one.

Darcy’s senior seminar—which she was taking online by special arrangement—was picking up steam, and soon she was pulling late-nighters and then _all_ -nighters trying to keep up with Jane’s research and visit with Loki and finish her enormous load of coursework, never _mind_ trying to spend time going out with friends. By the time her birthday rolled around in mid-March she was so swamped with work she forgot what day it was until about noon, when she looked up from plotting a graph in Jane’s lab to see Thor holding an enormous lopsided birthday cake.

The chorus of the birthday song was especially welcome with Jane and Erik singing in different keys and Thor stumbling through it like someone who had only heard the song once before, which was likely the case.

Darcy was grinning so broadly she thought her face would split in half. “That cake is a fire hazard.” 

“Thor got a little—excited about the candles,” Jane explained.

“You know I’m only turning 26, right?”

“I’m told that blowing them out will grant you a wish!” Thor said.

“Can I wish for less homework?”

Erik sat down on the lab stool across from her. “You’re not supposed to tell us.”

“I’m giving you the rest of the day off,” said Jane, shoving Darcy’s work materials out of the way. “I can’t believe you came in in the first place.”

Thor settled the cake down on the table in front of Darcy, then stood back. Darcy stared around at the three genuine smiles and felt a little of her stress melt away. Drawing a deep breath, she blew out the candles.

 

After everyone had had cake, Thor wrapped up the rest for her and Jane shooed Darcy out the door. “Get out, get out, go do birthday things! Meet up tonight for a drink?” Darcy readily agreed, and walked out of Stark Tower with a cake and no immediate plans. One-handed, she fumbled in her coat for her cell phone, and scrolled through her contact list for the friends she’d made since moving to New York…but they would all be at work, wouldn’t they?

Hell, who was she kidding?

“Yes, I am here on my birthday,” she announced to Joe, “I am just that pathetic.”

“Cake!” said Joe enthusiastically, and then, belatedly, “Happy birthday! Here.” He reached behind the guard desk and pulled out a little wrapped gift, walking with her toward Loki’s cell. 

“How the hell did you know?” 

“SHIELD has records on basically everyone they come into contact with." They walked through the sliding door into the room with the cell. “I looked you up when you started visiting down here.”

“That is just so nice!” Holding the cake out to one side, she wrapped Joe in a one-handed hug and saw Loki watching them over Joe’s shoulder. “Hey, buttmunch!” she said, still grinning. “It’s my birthday today!”

“So I’m told.”

“C’mon, open it,” said Joe, holding out the present. “Laura and I went in on it.”

“Remind me to thank her this weekend.” She set the cake down on the table so she could rip open the wrapping paper. 

“It’s not anything too exciting.”

Darcy dropped the wrapping paper on the floor and wiggled the gift in Joe’s face. “Yay, music!” She shoved the little iTunes gift card up against the barrier to Loki’s cell. “Look, music! Thanks, Joe!” She gave him another hug. “This is so nice of you guys, now I’m gonna have to get your birthdays written down and everything.”

“It’s no big deal,” smiled Joe. The phone started ringing in the guardroom. “Whoops,” he said and, waving, ducked back through the door.

“I’m gonna get some tunes _right now,_ ” said Darcy, pulling her laptop out of her bag and opening it up so it could boot. “You want cake?” she said to Loki. “I brought cake.”

“As is traditional,” said Loki.

“You’re being weird,” she observed. 

“You’re here early.”

“Yeah, Jane gave me half the day off so I could, like, birthday or whatever.”

“And you came here.”

Darcy shrugged and typed the password to her laptop, and then peeled some of the plastic wrap off one side of the cake so she could cut off a piece. She’d started keeping paper plates and plastic cutlery here so she didn’t have to keep schlepping it back and forth. Cake and plastic fork all loaded up, she slid the plate through the food slot, _ka-chunk_. It wasn’t until she’d hooked her laptop up to the wifi and loaded up iTunes that she noticed the significant silence on the part of her companion. She looked up. “What?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I got you?”

“Why would I do that? You don’t have any money.”

Loki affected nonchalance. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t get you anything.”

She peered up at him, half-smiling, half suspicious. “Why?”

“Why not?” he countered.

As was a habit of theirs, they fell into a staring contest. This time Darcy won.

“You humans have so very _few_ birthdays—“

“Yeah, okay, we’re pitiful, what’d you get me?” Darcy cut him off, bouncing out of her seat.

Loki waved a hand and innumerable purple bubbles, each the size of a softball, filled the air in his cell.

“Oooooh,” said Darcy in awe. “I thought you couldn’t do magic in there.”

“I can do small things,” he said, shrugging. “This will help keep me in practice.”

“Yeah, you clearly did this for selfish reasons."

“Point at one of them.”

Following his direction, she made a finger-gun and ‘shot’ it at a bubble to her left. It popped with a loud _crack!_

“Oooooh,” she said again and ‘shot’ a few more, _crack crack crack!_ “Can you make them make different noises?”

Loki blinked the way he did when he didn’t want to show she’d surprised him. “Such as?”

“Can you make ‘em fart?”

Now he was making the face that he made when he was trying _really hard_ not to laugh, because that would mean humans were funny and thus had value.

“C’mooooon,” she wheedled. “It’s my birthdaaay.”

A few minutes later Joe wandered in wondering 1) what all the laughter was about and 2) where all the fart noises were coming from.

 

Birthday drinks were had at a little divey bar that made the most ambrosial and inexpensive margaritas Darcy had ever tasted. In attendance were Jane, Thor, Darcy's friend Markie (who'd been at Culver with her), and Bao, who Darcy had met at a coffee shop on a particularly bad day, and who did a very entertaining impression of Rush Limbaugh. Erik had begged off, saying that he had a headache, though everyone knew it was because he'd stopped trusting himself around alcoholic beverages.

Darcy had brought along the unopened birthday gifts she'd received in the mail from her parents and from Chelsea, and once she'd opened these she was given two haphazardly-wrapped presents—one from Markie, and one from Jane and Thor (Bao's gift was that she was paying for Darcy's drinks). 

Markie had gotten her her very own tablet, in the hopes that she would stop borrowing his iPad (“When did you get _rich?!_ ” she exclaimed). Jane and Thor's gift was a wide selection of slouchy hats in various hues and patterns, some of which were quite blinding. Jane confessed that she hadn't been able to tear herself away from her work, which Darcy knew was taking a very interesting turn, so Jane'd sent Thor to pick the hats out. This gave Darcy a vivid mental picture of Thor in a modern retail store that was an even better gift than the hats themselves. 

Once Bao had settled the bar tab, and Darcy had tipsily draped herself all over Bao and Markie to thank them for the 'best birthday ever, you guys are _the best_ and I wouldn't say that to just anyone, you are _the. Best,_ ' Thor and Jane volunteered to walk Darcy back to her hole-in-the-wall apartment.

“So what did you do with your time off today?” Jane asked. 

“Went to visit Loki.” Even through the haze of liquor, Darcy didn't mistake the concerned look Jane shot at Thor. “He gave me this great gift, these magic purple balloons that make fart noises when you pop them. It was like the most hilarious carnival game ever. And Joe and Laura gave me a gift card!”

“Who are Joe and Laura?”

“Two of the guards. They's my _buds,_ ” said Darcy. “You guys is my _buds_ too, you know? You're seriously, just—ridiculously cool. Hey, Thor!” she said with sudden inspiration. “Can you take me for a ride on Myeuh-Myeuh? Like could we go flying right now? That would be the _best birthday gift ever,_ I'm not even joking.”

“Darcy...” began Thor. “Do you think you are perhaps spending too much time visiting my brother?”

“Pfff, no,” said Darcy, waving a hand unconcernedly. “But a ride on Myeuh-Myeuh? I won't squirm or anything, I promise.”


	7. Breakthrough

Life continued on apace, and Darcy went back to being majorly stressed by the sheer amount of work she had to do. ('It's a forty-page paper!' she mourned aloud to an unconcerned Loki at one point. 'Why don't they just call it a thesis and get it over with?') The only thing that changed was that occasionally Thor or Jane would try to intercede and take her out somewhere so she wouldn't get a chance to visit Loki. Sometimes she'd let them win (hey, they'd pay for dinner. Free dinner!), but mostly she'd make herself scarce before they could ask. Darcy didn't look at her motives for this too closely; visiting Loki had become a relief from stress, of sorts, and that was all.

One day in early April Darcy bypassed the multiple layers of security and found that Joe wasn't at his post in the guardroom—it was some other guy, who introduced himself as Jamal. He seemed a bit shy, so Darcy just waved at him and continued on through to the room with the cell.

Setting her bag down on the table, she started unpacking some library books. “I got this crazy new pie today, it's called 'Berry Blitz,' which sounds really violent, so hopefully it doesn't like punch you in the mouth or anything--”

“ _Leave. Now,_ ” snarled Loki as Darcy turned around.

“Oh, are we back here? I’ll just take the pie and go,” said Darcy mildly.

“I have no use for your silly little mortal _treats,_ as though I were some feral dog that needed to be _trained._ ” It was astonishing how quickly Darcy had forgotten how grotesque Loki looked with a face twisted in rage. “You’re _pathetic._ You thought you could, what, teach me to like you? _You?_ You’re just another sow, wallowing in the mud—“

“Hey, now,” said Darcy.

“Just like the rest of the pitiful Midgardians, crawling around through your miniscule lives as though _anything_ you did could possibly have any meaning. You are _wretched! Puny! ANIMALS!_ ” He punctuated each word by slamming his hand against the invisible barrier, which made angry _POP_ and _FIZZLE_ noises. On the last syllable he spoke, Loki stormed his way to his cot and overturned it with an almighty _CRASH,_ then busied himself with kicking the metal headboard over and over again. 

Making her way calmly to the folding chair, Darcy sat and endeavored not to show that she found Loki’s anger at all frightening.

Once finished kicking the hell out of his cot and headboard, Loki flung himself against the wall of his cell and sank down, letting his elbows rest on his bent knees, and his forehead rest on the heels of his hands.

Ever-so-calmly, Darcy reached out and served herself some pie, and waited. The pie was a little too tart for her liking—it would have gone nicely with some ice cream. She was halfway through the slice before Loki spoke again. 

“Darcy,” he said quietly, not moving.

“Wow, five months in and I finally have a name!” She peered in at him, trying to see past the curtain of his hair. “You done screaming at me now?

“I killed all those people,” he said, sounding crushed, voice rough. “Their lives were already to be so short, and I took even that away from them.”

Standing, Darcy leaned as close to him as she could with the barrier in the way. “What _happened?_ ”

Still not moving, he said, “Joe's mother has cancer. That's why he's not here.”

A beat. “Oh, _no._ ” She sank into the chair again. “What kind? Do you know what stage it's in?”

He shrugged helplessly and finally lifted his head. Now that he wasn’t raging at her, she could see the deep circles under his eyes, and his skin, though normally bone-pale, was an unearthly ashen color.

There was a long silence and then she said, “Well, shit.” Then, “When did he—when did _you_ —find out?”

“Right at the end of his shift yesterday.”

Darcy took a deep breath and pressed her fist to her mouth, breathing out slowly.

“What can I do?” Loki's eyes pleaded with her. “This woman has shown me such kindness, and she doesn't even know me, or know of the things that I've done, and I'm trapped in here and I can't even—”

Laying aside Loki’s astonishing and sudden change of heart, she replied, “We'll call Joe. Give him some moral support. I'm sure the other guards have his number. We'll wait, though. He's probably wrapped up in all—” she waved a hand “— _this_ right now, he doesn't need us butting in.”

“No.”

Darcy smushed her face into her hands, heaving another deep breath. “God. Wow.” A moment of silence. “Well we definitely need pie.”

“Don't,” said Loki. “I don't deserve it. Or any of this attention, really.” A pause, and then he said, “I’m sorry I shouted at you.”

“…So you don’t really think I’m a sow,” said Darcy, trying for deadpan.

“No,” he said, with a very faint shadow of a smile. “I don’t know why you keep coming here. With what I've done...”

Forgetting she was wearing a hat, Darcy went to run a hand through her hair, and her fingers tangled in the knitted fibers. Absentmindedly she tugged the hat from her head and stood to move closer to where Loki slumped on the floor. “I'm not gonna lie, you did some pretty terrible shit.” He huffed a broken and bitter laugh. “But I think there might have been some...extenuating circumstances.”

“There's no excuse for—”

“I'm not excusing it. You're right, there is no excuse. But I think I can explain it.”

That broken laugh again. “Then please, explain. I can't think what could possibly, _possibly_ have led me to think the things I was thinking. Thor was right when he said I was mad.”

Darcy took another step toward the cell. “I've done a lot of thinking about it, and I think what happened...I think something really bad happened to you, and it made things sort've...snap.”

“You're talking about a psychotic break,” said Loki, and Darcy raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Laura gave me a book about human psychology.”

“Of course she did." Laura used to profile supernatural serial killers for a living. “Yeah, well, that's been my theory from the beginning.”

“But such an incident would have ended before now—”

“No, I don't think so." Darcy stepped even closer. “No way, 'cause bad stuff just kept happening to you, like whatever happened after you fell that you won't talk about, and then your mom dying...”

Loki crossed his arms, bracing them on his knees, and let his head fall onto his arms with a muffled thump.

“And who knows, maybe this kind of thing, like, lasts longer in longer-lived people. I mean, I'm clearly no expert in alien psychology.”

“But you knew,” he said, looking up sharply. “You knew from the beginning, didn't you, that I was delusional?”

Darcy shifted uncomfortably, shrugging. “Thor told me about what you were like before all this...it just made sense, y'know?”

“Why did you even come here, if you knew I was mad?” There were tears in his eyes, and Darcy tried to pretend there weren't any in hers. 

“'Cause you needed help. And no one was giving it to you.”

“What made you think you could help me?” He searched her eyes for an answer. “What made you think I even deserved help?”

“Everyone needs help." She sank to her knees next to the transparent wall of the cell, facing him. She raised a hand to press her fingertips to the 'glass,' not even really noticing the unpleasant buzzing against her skin. “Everyone.”

Loki let his face fall into his hands and his shoulders started shaking. But a moment later, he lifted his arms upward as if beseeching the heavens, and he was laughing. “And you brought me pie!”

Darcy started to laugh, too, and they both sat on the floor, incapacitated by their laughter. 

Eventually their laughter quieted down into giggles, and then Loki's face fell into an expression that showed so many emotions Darcy couldn't separate any of them out. “What happened to you?” he said softly, and she flinched, shifting to sit with her back against the same wall as him. “How could you possibly be so insightful? You're so young.” She shot him a mock-glare and he said, “I'm not comparing you to me, I'm comparing you to other humans.” Darcy stared at the floor. “It's so obvious now that I know to look for it. All that bluster and forthrightness, you're clearly covering something--”

“Don't—don't--” said Darcy. _Don't pick me apart._

“I'm sorry,” he said, and waited.

Darcy was still a moment, just focusing on her breath. “When I was fifteen I had an abortion.” They caught each others' eyes, then she looked back at the ground in front of her. “I was just, I was really stupid. I was seeing this kid, and he said 'Wanna?' and I didn't really but I figured I should just go along with it. Y'know, for all kinds of reasons. Like, people would find out at school if I didn't and make fun of me, and what if I never got the chance again, 'cause I wasn't exactly popular, and—whatever, it was my stupid decision. I didn't have to, no one forced me.

“And I got pregnant. I didn't want to believe it at first, but then I knew what I had to do. So, um, I sold my computer—my parents were _pissed_ —and I went to the clinic and they...” She hugged herself, remembering the crinkle of the paper on the exam table and the feel of latex gloves against her skin. “It was ten years ago and I'm still—God.” She re-focused on breathing deeply. “I don't talk about this. With anyone. The only person I ever told was my sister, Chelsea, and that was only 'cause she caught me walking to the clinic.

“It was the right thing to do,” she forced through her teeth. “It was. I was too young and it would have seriously messed my life up, even if I'd given up the baby for adoption, and it's actually really dangerous to have a kid when you're that young...but I, in essence, I…took someone’s potential away from them. It was barely a fetus, it wasn’t even aware, but it could’ve been a person. I always argue with myself and say ‘you don’t know when life truly begins’ and ‘you lose an egg a month and those could potentially be people, too,’ but…I dunno. I still…” Remembering who she was talking to, she looked up to meet his eyes. “I don't tell this to people,” she repeated.

“For what it's worth,” he said softly, “I think you made the right decision.”

“Damn right I did,” she said, laughing through her clenched jaw. A tear finally spilled down her cheek and she wiped it away with an almost violent motion. “So, I know it's more of a personal, I mean, it's not an inter-planetary tragedy, but--”

“It's still a tragedy. Whatever you say. And I'm sorry you had to go through it.”

There was a long, long pause as they both stared at the wall opposite, until finally Darcy broke the silence. “I like new, not-delusional Loki. Much nicer.” She cut her eyes towards him and a cunning smile swept over his face.

“Don't get used to it. I’ve never been very nice, Thor will attest to that.”

They grinned at each other until the grin slipped off Loki's face. “Please stay.”

Darcy deliberately did not think about the ten pages of her paper she'd planned to finish that evening. “Of course.”

***

Somewhere a ring tone was blaring loudly. Darcy flung an arm out of bed and fumbled around on the floor blindly until she found her glasses, which she blearily smashed onto her face. Ah! There was her phone.

“H’lo? Oh, man, what time is it?” She held the phone away from her face. 12:43pm. “Jane, I’m really sorry, I slept in—Sorry, sorry, sorry!—I can’t come in today. No. Um, up late working on homework. I know. I know. I _know,_ Jane, God. Yes, I will still be there tonight. Yes, I will be dressed appropriately. Okay. Okay. Okay. _Okay, Jane, I’ll see you later._ ”

_Boop!_ Darcy chucked the phone somewhere in the direction of end-of-the-bed and flopped back into her nest of pillows, removing her glasses. She actually hadn’t made her way out of SHIELD’s secret basement hideout until the sun was rising. The only reason she’d finally left was ‘cause the guards’ shifts had changed and they’d come in to put Loki into his special magic-proof handcuffs to take him to the showers. Once Darcy had gotten home, she hadn’t even changed out of her clothes before collapsing into bed.

And now she had ten pages of her paper to work on before she went to Stark Tower tonight. Crap. No more sleep for Darcy.

What’d happened last night hardly seemed real—though maybe that was the sleep deprivation talking. After she’d promised to stay, they’d sat up all night together, sometimes talking, mostly not. The subject matter stayed light, on the whole, settling back into their usual discussions of books that she’d provided for him, and of pop culture. At one point they spent some time speculating about Joe’s mom and what could be happening, but their information on the topic was soon exhausted, and they were both too upset to really converse about it at length.

The change in Loki’s attitude was subtle, but glaringly obvious to Darcy. It was almost surreal: she’d have a mental prediction of what he’d say before he’d say it, and sometimes that prediction would prove startlingly wrong. 

Though now she came to think of it, he really hadn’t changed all that much. He was still a snarky asshole, and he was still a bit condescending, but it all seemed to lack any real malice. It was like he was being a pompous jerk more out of habit than anything else.

For about an hour sometime during the night Loki showed her a bunch of illusions he’d learned how to do—all of them within the cell, of course, since he still wasn’t able to do magic outside. Most of the illusions were of him. (‘Narcissistic much?’ ‘It’s very useful in battle!’ ‘Yeah, whatever, you know you spent hours in front of the mirror making sure your hair looked perfect.’) He even managed to mock up a fairly convincing illusion of Darcy herself, which she at first said was freaky but then she made him ‘Turn it around so I can check out how my butt looks.’

And a lot of the time they just sat in silence, mourning for the people who’d been killed. Who Loki had killed. And the people he’d forced to do things against their will. 

“That’s not something someone can ever really get over,” Darcy’d said.

“I hope not,” said Loki.

Now, in her tiny bed-sit, Darcy scrubbed at her face and reached for her laptop. Maybe if she could write those ten pages in three or four hours she’d have time for a nap before the event in the evening.


	8. Much Shouting

It was a full-on Tony Stark extravaganza, and Darcy drank almost two entire Red Bulls before she felt human enough to even consider getting ready to go. The paper had eaten up five hours of her afternoon, since she kept nodding off in the middle of typing a sentence. After a brief shower in the communal bathroom down the hall, she threw on the fancy dress she’d picked out the week before. She hadn’t put too much thought into her selection—no time!—but whatever, it was black, it fit her, and she could dress it up with some fancy jewelry. Slapping on some small amount of eye shadow, liner, and some lipstick, Darcy gulped the last of her Red Bull and headed for high society.

The function was to celebrate the release of a new piece of StarkTech (normal!Darcy would be super-excited to try out new tech. tiredandstressed!Darcy had lost touch to the point that she didn’t even know what kind of tech it _was_ ). Jane was going to the party to make contact with some other science folk that were on the guest list, and she was bringing Darcy along to ‘show some solidarity.’ The fact was that Jane was mostly still considered a crackpot, and Erik had been seen on television streaking at Stonehenge, so Jane needed all the backup from vaguely-sane-looking people that she could get.

Thor was towering over much of the crowd in a nice tuxedo, his hair in a ponytail. As Darcy grew closer, she spotted Jane looking petite and uncomfortable in an elegant purple dress. “Darcy!” she exclaimed, coming forward.

“Wow! You’re in a dress,” said Darcy, smiling. “You look smexy.”

“You look…tired,” said Jane. “And kind of like you got into a fight.”

“I had a disagreement with my hair dryer.” Darcy had tried with her hair, she really had, but typically when her hair was unrestrained by a hat, it cried ‘Freedom!’ and sought for world domination.

“May I be of assistance?” Thor’s voice managed to boom even when he tried to speak quietly. Jane made a noise of exasperation, followed by one of relief, then muttered something about going to get some punch and took off into the crowd.

Thor guided Darcy out of the center of the crowd and offered her a chair. “You’re gonna fix my hair for me?”

“If you’ve no objection,” he said with a kindly smile.

“Just don’t let me fall asleep.”

Thor made quick work of it—a man of many talents! Jane picked a real winner—and by the time Jane made her way back to them with three cups of punch he was just putting in the finishing touches.

“That looks—great,” said Jane, much more calmly. She looked up at Thor, impressed. “Nice job.”

“Thank you.”

“It pays to date a guy with long hair,” Darcy told Jane.

“We’d better…um, mingle,” Jane said, nervous.

Darcy grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the crowd. “C’mon. Who are those scientists you wanted to talk to?” 

They mingled. Jane spoke to several scientists and got mixed responses, ranging between polite dismissals to excited gesturing and notes taken on cocktail napkins. Thor followed along with them, a happy cruise ship following two tiny tugboats. Darcy ate a lot of very expensive canapés. At one point Tony Stark (!!!) himself showed up to say ‘Hi’ to Thor, and got sucked into a brief conversation with Jane and Darcy about Jane’s research, followed by an even briefer discussion with Darcy about foreign policy regarding extraterrestrial phenomena (which Darcy looked forward to spending hours dissecting with her fellow poli-sci students).

She was just snaffling another very expensive hors d’oeuvre from a passing waiter when Thor bent close to her ear and said, “May I have a word with you?”

“Sure, big guy, what about?”

“Perhaps we should seek some fresh air.”

It was one of those rare April nights without rain. Leaving Jane in a flail-y science discussion with some other scientist—Doctor something Richards?—Thor and Darcy made their way out onto a chilly patio.

“Are you cold?” Thor asked, concerned.

Darcy clutched her drink closer. “I have my punch to keep me warm.”

“I wish to speak with you about last night.”

Darcy blinked. “What about it?”

He leaned forward against the railing. “I know you spoke to Loki last night.”

“…Yeah, so what? I do that all the—“

“I know of what you spoke,” said Thor.

Darcy felt a little anger rise in her. “Okay,” she bit out. “So?”

“I fear my brother is misleading you. He has misled many before, some more cunning than—“

“Look,” she began, pointing a finger at Thor’s chest. “Just because you don’t have mental illness on your planet _doesn’t mean—_ “

“I do not wish to see you hurt! I have been watching what’s passed between you these months and—“

“Wait,” said Darcy, low and dangerous. She was full-on shivering in her sleeveless dress now. “You’ve been _watching?_ That’s why you stopped asking how it was going? ‘Cause you were acting like some kind of peeping tom?”

“I wished only to ensure your welfare!”

“I expect that kinda crap from SHIELD, ‘cause they’re, like, a shadow government, lying, spying kinda organization, but I thought you were cooler than that,” she said, backing away from him.

“My brother is lying to you!” 

“You can’t—know that!”

“He lies!” cried Thor, voice carrying a bit more, eyes desperate. “You cannot trust him.”

“What, like I trusted you? You know, trusted you not to spy on me?”

“What’s going on out here?” Jane had appeared on the patio. Darcy looked around and saw the few other party-goers who were outside looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Everything okay?”

A long pause and then, “Oh, yeah, it’s all good,” Darcy said, overly perky. “Just finishing up telling your boyfriend to keep his giant Asgardian nose out of my business.”

Jane looked lost. “What?”

Darcy turned back to Thor, whose face was creased with remorse and concern. “My lifespan might not be as long as yours, but keep in mind that by our standards I’m a grown-ass woman who can make her own decisions. M’kay? Great. Glad we’ve got that straightened out.” Darcy stormed out, which was difficult to do when a) you were already outside and b) you were wearing a fancy, swishy dress. On her way to the coatroom she grabbed a few more canapés and jammed them in her mouth. They tasted like anger and adrenaline, and felt all wrong on her tongue.

 

***

It was Jamal on duty when Darcy arrived at SHIELD, still fuming. “I know it must be after lights-out,” she said, checking the time on her cell phone. “But is he still awake?”

“Um,” Jamal said, looking down at the monitors behind the counter. “Yes.” Wow, this guy was _painfully_ shy.

“Great, I'm goin' in.” Darcy stomped her way into the room, throwing her dainty beaded purse with unnecessary force onto the table, and after a brief struggle, following it with her jacket. “I know I said I'd leave you alone to think about stuff this weekend, but I am just _so mad_ at your brother.” 

Loki was reclined on his bed, a book open in front of him as he blatantly stared at her. “Oh,” he said, taking in the sight of Darcy's dress and heels.

“I just found out--” thundered Darcy, before noticing Loki's gawping. “Are you even listening?”

“Did Thor do your hair?”

“What?” Darcy fumbled around at the back of her head, discovering a ribbon there pulling the top half of her hair away from her face. “Oh. Yeah, he did, before I got _really mad at him,_ which is what I'm trying to tell you!”

“Right,” he said slowly. “Because...”

“He knows everything we said last night!”

“Aren't you cold?” 

Darcy looked down at her bare shoulders, scoffed, and wrestled her wrap free from the sleeves of her coat, where it had gotten tangled. She slung it around herself, and said, “Listening now?!”

Loki grinned at her. “You look nice.”

“Thor is spying on us!”

At this he blinked. “Oh. He’s probably—“

He didn't get another word out, however, because at that moment several jack-booted thugs—at least two more than were necessary—came trooping in and seized Darcy by the shoulders. “The Director wants to see you,” one of them growled.

“Hey—wait--” Darcy protested, struggling to look back at Loki. “Ow! Hey!” They marched her out past Jamal, who was meekly hiding behind his desk as if in fear of Darcy's wrath, and through a complex labyrinth of halls, elevators, more halls, and stairs, before finally depositing her in front of an unassuming-looking door. One of the thugs pressed a buzzer next to the door, which opened, and Darcy was shoved unceremoniously inside. “What the _hell?_ ” she demanded.

Nick Fury was sitting composedly behind a terrifyingly-large-and-shiny desk. All the times Darcy had met with him previously had been in a conference room, so she was unfamiliar with his office, which was, she'd admit, fairly intimidating.

“Why are you still here? Don't you have a home to go to?” Darcy asked him, straightening her wrap.

“The question is why _you_ are here, Miss Lewis,” said Fury, folding his hands solemnly on his desk. “So very late at night.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “Mr. Odinson was kind enough to phone ahead and tell me you might be dropping in. He expressed some concerns to me that you may have been compromised. So I have,” Fury shifted in his seat with a creaking of leather, “some questions that I wish to ask you.”

“I have some to ask _you,_ ” Darcy said, finally finding her voice again. “For one thing, why the _hell_ is SHIELD airing my dirty laundry to other people? I mean, I knew you guys were monitoring us talking, but how the hell is what we were saying _anyone else's business?_ ” Fury cleared his throat, but Darcy kept rolling. “Do you have, like, a person who does little highlight reels to share around the office? Are all your little lackeys giggling about my abor—about my secrets?”

“I consider that information need-to-know only.” The Director was unfazed by Darcy's ranting. “We have only disclosed a limited amount of information to Mr. Odinson, in order to keep him apprised of the situation.”

“Yeah, well he could've just asked!”

“Would you really have told him?” asked Fury impassively.

“If I thought it was his business to know, yeah!”

“But you didn't consider it his business to tell him that his brother has supposedly 'made a breakthrough.'”

Darcy had her mouth open to shout some more, but this made her close it and shift uncertainly. She took a deep breath and asked, “If you don't trust me, then why hasn't SHIELD provided Loki with a real psychiatrist?”

“What makes you think his games would be played any differently with a professional?”

“What makes you think he's playing games?” countered Darcy.

“Past experience.” He still hadn't unfolded his hands where they rested on top of a pile of paperwork. “And testimony from his brother, who I believe has a _little_ more familiarity in dealing with his sibling than you do.”

“What _exactly_ do you think Loki could be trying to accomplish by tricking me?” She folded her arms. “Am I going to take part in a caper to help him escape the cell surrounded by fifteen layers of security and armed guards?”

“I don't think Loki would need a reason other than that it amuses him.”

Darcy worked her mouth for a moment, trying to force words out of it. “You—for _fun?_ You think he's doing this for _fun?_ ”

Fury finally unclasped his hands and spread them.

Darcy sputtered some more and then said, “ _No one_ is that good an actor. I mean, that would be _Oscar-worthy_. Like, he would sweep, he'd win everything, even best animated feature or whatever.”

“All I'm trying to say is that you should take what he says with a grain of salt.”

“You're so sure he's not trustworthy, but I don't see how you're any better.”

“We're entitled to monitor our prisoners.”

“Yes, duh, of course, but you're denying him some pretty basic rights.”

“Please. Illuminate me.”

“Hunh, to start, 'illumination' is one of them. Why was the light still on when I went down there tonight? Do you guys ever even turn those lights off?”

A beat. “It would impair our ability to monitor--”

“Like you don't have night-vision cameras and technology up the wazoo?” she asked. “You do know that it's a form of torture, right? Do we have our own New York version of Gitmo going on here? It’s been scientifically proven that keeping artificial lights constantly on can disrupt someone’s sleep patterns—“

“Miss Lewis, I do not have time for this tonight.” There was a silent, _Or ever_ hanging in the air. “Will it satisfy you if I give Loki a bedtime?” Darcy raised her eyebrows, challenging him. Picking up his desk phone, Fury dialed a few numbers and muttered into the receiver. After hanging up he cast meaningful looks between Darcy and the door. 

“No, uh, I’m not done,” she said. Fury sighed. “Loki may not have a right to privacy, but I do. You shouldn’t be showing any footage with me in it to anyone outside your organization.”

“Thor was a part of the Avengers Initi—“

“Is he on your payroll?” Darcy cut him off. “No. He’s not. I know because Jane’s been using her paychecks from Stark Industries to support Thor’s junk food addiction. He is not employed by you, which means he is not entitled to see or hear anything that I—“

“I will take the matter under consideration,” said Fury. “Good _night,_ Miss Lewis.” With this he stood and ushered her out the door.

“Don’t think this is over, Spy Man, ‘cause this is not over,” she said as he shooed her along. “I’m going back to Loki’s cell and you can’t stop me!” she called. Fury shut the door in her face. Directing her gaze to the guard who still stood next to Fury’s office door, Darcy said, “How do I get back to Loki’s cell, again?”

 

“Hi again, Jamal,” Darcy said. “Did the Director call you and tell you to turn out the lights?”

“Um,” said the painfully-shy Jamal.

“It’s okay,” she waved a hand, “just, if you turned them out, can you turn them on again for a minute?”

Extending one finger, Jamal pushed a button on the switchboard in front of him. Darcy was going to leave it until later to get indignant about how easy it was to turn the lights on and off.

Loki was pacing heatedly around in his cell, but he slowed to a stop when Darcy walked back in. “What happened?” he said, feigning calm.

“I told him he doesn’t screw with Darcy Lewis, that’s what happened,” said Darcy, trying to float on a lowering tide of anger. Seeing something behind Loki, she gestured, “What, they even took your cot, now?” The metal frame was gone, leaving just the sad little mattress on the floor. “When did that happen?”

“I may have, er, thrown it when they wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone,” he said, sheepish.

“What’re they gonna take next, the toilet?” The last of her fury ebbing away, Darcy felt her legs go a little wobbly, and stumbled over to the chair to sit down. “Wow.” Loki started chuckling. “Hey, quit it. I just spent the past, like, hour yelling at two very, very powerful people.” All of her exhaustion hitting her at once, Darcy smiled dimly up at Loki. “Is this what we do now? I yell at people for you, and you flip furniture for me?”

“Isn’t that what friends do for each other?”

“Something like that.” Darcy stood, gathering up her things from the table.

“You’re not going to put the jacket back on?” Loki complained, and when she darted an annoyed look at him, he responded with a shit-eating grin. “I like your dress.”

“You would,” she said, buttoning her coat. “Hey, friends don’t let friends ogle them in fancy dresses.”

“Perhaps some of these friends have not been outside for some time.” Darcy snorted a tired laugh. “You should go home and get some rest.”

“I told them to turn the lights off at night for you.”

“Thank you,” said Loki. “Darcy.”

“What?” She blinked at him hazily.

“I will speak to my brother.”

“He’s your brother again?” asked Darcy. “Wait, I don’t know if that’s good or bad right now. You tell him he’s a jerk from me! Though, I don’t really know if…ummmm.” Tilting her head up to Loki, who was plainly amused, she said, “I should really go to bed.”

“You really should.”

“Good night, Loki. We’ll call Joe on Monday.”

“Good night, Darcy.”

“I’ll hit the lights on m’way out!” she called.


	9. Aftereffects

Cast adrift for the weekend, and finding she was unable to concentrate on writing her paper, Darcy resorted to extreme distraction tactics and begged Bao to go with her to Coney Island for the day. Only a few of the rides were open this early in the year, so after riding the Ferris wheel they got some official Coney Island hot dogs and talked the afternoon away on a bench. When it started raining, Bao said she had to get home, and Darcy found herself at a loss. She hadn't realized how much of her free time she'd been spending at SHIELD until she'd promised to stay away for a few days.

After running some errands she'd been putting off for weeks, Darcy found herself back in her puny bed-sit, phoning Chelsea for lack of anything better to do. Chelsea, for her part, was surprised to be receiving a call from her little sister when the latter was not in need of a favor, but was happy to chatter away for an hour or two. 

And then Darcy was left alone with her thoughts and a cup-o-noodles. Resolutely, she switched on her tablet and played Fruit Ninja and definitely did no brooding, no sir no way.

Thankfully, on Sunday she was able to devote her full attention to revising her paper, which she did until her back cramped up from sitting hunched over her laptop all day long.

Then came Monday ( _fi_ nally), and Darcy trooped dutifully over to Stark Tower to face Jane, who would undoubtedly be annoyed that Darcy’d bailed on Friday night.

When Darcy arrived, Jane was fully absorbed in arranging some photographs on a digital bulletin board along one wall, so Darcy got on with her data entry in peace for a full hour and a half before Jane at last acknowledged Darcy’s existence.

“Morning,” said Darcy, fiddling with her glasses. “I brought you pastries.”

“Thor told me what happened,” Jane said, anger clouding her face. “I want you to know that I'm not happy with you, but I'm not happy with him either, so...”

“How much did he tell you?”

“Too much. I'm sorry, Darcy. That wasn't his secret to tell. Which is why I'm not happy with him.”

“ _Good,_ ” Darcy replied. Jane still looked really angry. “Dude, am I fired?”

“No,” said Jane, turning back to her calculations, the lines of her body tense. “I couldn't fire you for anything that happens in your personal life. It would be unethical.”

“Oh. Cool, I guess?”

“I'm not okay with what you're doing,” Jane rounded on her, furious. “I never thought it was a good idea. You're reaching out to someone who doesn't deserve it, and you have someone who's been here, in the lab, _your friend,_ who is far more deserving of help!”

“I brought Erik pie, too!” Darcy defended. “And kilts!”

“He hasn't been coming into the lab because of you!” It was true: Erik had made himself more and more scarce in the past couple of months. “He's been locking himself up in his room, muttering to himself! Why are you out helping this—this _monster,_ when you have a _friend_ who--”

“It's different, okay?” Darcy contested hotly. “Erik has a choice! He could go and see a therapist if he wanted to!”

“He deserves to have a friend there for him.”

“Why can't you help him?”

“'Cause I'm--” Jane flopped her hands helplessly by her sides. “--I'm--working. I'm not good at—feelings and—things.”

Darcy gave her a disbelieving look. “And you think I am? All I'm doing is bringing Loki food—same as I do for you and Erik.”

“You're doing more than that,” argued Jane. “You're better at this stuff than you think, but Darcy— _Loki is better at tricking people._ No, listen--” she said, when Darcy started to speak. “I'm not—”

“Look. You said you can't fire me for stuff that I do in my personal life. Anyway, why does this even bother you? You're just—you're my boss.”

“I don't know!” Jane's voice seemed to get higher in pitch when she started running out of things to say. “I've—we've been through so much together, I thought...”

“Outer-space monsters and stuff,” Darcy agreed. Jane had obviously run out of words, so she just shrugged. “This is my thing, okay, bosslady? It doesn't have to bug you if you don't let it. And Loki said he was gonna ask to talk to Thor, and maybe he'll talk him around, I dunno.” It was Darcy's turn to shrug. “Or maybe they hate each other forever. Either way, I'm graduating in a month, and you won't have to deal with me ever again if you don't want to.”

“I still want to go to your graduation,” grumbled Jane.

“That's cool, 'cause I saved you a ticket.” Darcy examined the digital bulletin board behind Jane. “Did you want help arranging those pictures?”

Jane glanced at the board and then nodded ruefully. They worked in silence the rest of the day.

***

Laura was on in the guardroom that evening when Darcy arrived, bearing pizza. “Hey,” greeted Darcy, but Laura shushed her, waving her over behind the counter. Pulling one of the earbuds from her ears, she offered it to Darcy. “What? Who’s in there?” Darcy peered at the monitors, and saw Thor’s highly-recognizable profile. “Oh, whoa! When did he get here?”

“An hour ago,” said Laura. “Loki’s been waiting all weekend.”

“Living vicariously, Laura?” said Darcy with a sly smile.

“Lady’s gotta make her entertainment somehow,” Laura waggled her eyebrows. “Listen. I’m not supposed to tell you this,” they moved their heads a little closer together, and Laura whispered, “but Fury wouldn’t even let Thor in until today.”

“What?! But that’s his brother!”

“I know,” said Laura, keeping her voice low. “But—I heard how the Director thought you’d been compromised, and he thought Loki’s brother would go the same way. Gerald—he’s the man I know in Fury’s section of offices—said it wasn’t until Thor threatened to smash things with that big phallic symbol of his that Fury’d let him in.”

“Good old Myeuh-Myeuh.” On the monitor in front of her, Thor was sitting atop the metal table on which Darcy did homework. The table usually seemed pretty sturdy, but under all that muscle it looked way more fragile. Thor and Loki seemed to be speaking calmly, but both were holding some tension in their shoulders.

“They were shouting before,” said Laura. “I thought I’d have to go in there.”

“How long have you been listening?” Darcy gestured to the earbuds.

“A few minutes. Mostly I’ve just been staring at blondie, there. Easy on the eyes.”

“He’s a good-looking dude,” agreed Darcy, nodding.

“So you wanna listen in?” Laura held up the earbud again.

“He _did_ spy on me first,” she said, after a moment of thought. “Okay, gimme.” They both plugged an earbud into their ears, and Laura jabbed a button on the control panel.

_“—surprised to hear you call me ‘brother,’”_ Thor was saying. His voice sounded tinny over the little speaker. _“Do you still call Odin ‘father’?”_

_“…I don’t know,”_ said Loki. _“I don’t know that I’ve yet forgiven him for hiding the truth from me for so long.”_

“Yeah, fair enough,” muttered Darcy. Laura shushed her.

_“He sought to protect you,”_ said Thor.

_“I didn’t need his protecting, I needed the **truth.** If he had been honest with me, none of this would have happened.”_

_“Would it not? Would you still not have released the Frost Giants into the treasure room?”_

_“We both know you weren’t ready for the crown.”_

_“…Yes,”_ ceded Thor. _“But perhaps…”_

 _“There was a better way to show you? Well,”_ said Loki with a bitter laugh. _“Live and learn.”_

_“You have done me grievous wrong, brother—“_

_“I wish to make amends.”_

_“And I wish that I could trust you,”_ countered Thor. _“For I also wish to make amends. But your change in manner is so sudden, and for that reason I fear it is not genuine.”_

 _“Was your own turnabout not as sudden? According to Odin, three days on Midgard made you worthy of the kingdom.”_ The tiny figure of Loki on the screen spread its hands. _“It seems Midgard is the finest destination for harsh lessons.”_

 _“You certainly taught them a harsh one,”_ said Thor, anger in his voice. Darcy saw Loki’s shoulders stiffen even further. _“Do you not still desire that the Midgardians kneel to you?”_

 _“No,”_ said Loki shortly. _“No. They are…I have come to see the value in these humans. Their lives are so brief that every trauma seems much larger in their eyes. Everything has more significance to them, every moment, every trinket.”_ There was some small amount of wonder in his voice. _“I find that—“_

Darcy yanked the earbud from her ear, straightening up. “Um. It seems like they’re, uh, gonna be talking for awhile. I’ll just—come back tomorrow.” Laura was staring up at her, perturbed, her earbud still in her ear. “You can offer them the pizza, if you want. Yeah, I’ll just—come back tomorrow,” Darcy said again, and made for the exit. She was unsure why she was so unsettled, but she knew she didn’t want to hear any more alien opinions about human worth.

***

The following night, after another awkward day in the lab with Jane (still no sign of Thor or Erik), Darcy showed up at SHIELD headquarters with cupcakes from a fancy-schmancy cupcake bakery down the street. After much cajoling, she managed to get Jamal to take a cupcake—as far as Darcy was concerned, there was something seriously wrong with someone who was too shy to eat a free cupcake.

With much careful shuffling about, Darcy managed to find the sweet spot for cell phone reception in the underground room, and, standing perfectly still, dialed the number Laura had given her as Joe’s cell. 

“I’m putting it on speakerphone,” Darcy said, carefully depressing the button so as not to jar the phone from its two-bar happy place. 

“Will that mean he’ll hear both of us?” said Loki, who looked like nothing so much as a large wading bird as he tried to peer at the phone through the barrier.

“Shush! It’s ringing.” They listened until they heard Joe pick up.

“Hello?”

“Joe! It’s Darcy—Laura gave me your number—“

“Wow, hi, Darcy.”

“Loki’s here, too, but we weren’t sure if you’d be able to hear him.”

“Hello?” Loki tried.

“Yeah, I can hear you—it’s quiet, though,” said Joe. “What’s up, guys?”

“Just wanted to see how you’re doing,” said Darcy.

“How fares your mother?” put in Loki.

If Joe was surprised at this line of inquiry, he gave no sign. “She’s…okay. Cancer’s not good news, obviously, but they, um, they say they have some treatment options. They say they hope she’ll have, like, at least five years.”

Darcy hissed through her teeth and met eyes with Loki, who looked vaguely stricken.

“Yeah, uh. Um. Better than what some people have, you know. My step-dad’s pretty messed up, but my mom is…surprisingly okay with everything, considering. In pain, but…calm. My uncle’s coming down from Maine to help out with stuff, you know, so I can get back to work.”

“Should you not stay there, with your mother?” asked Loki.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” came Joe’s voice, along with a burst of static. “—ello? You…—ill there?”

“We’re here!” called Darcy. “Just wanted to check in! I’ll get you a cupcake when you get back! Ohhh, lost the call,” she said, frowning at the phone. “Crap.” She slumped down into the folding chair, dumping her phone on the table. All was quiet for a moment, until Darcy asked, “So, you, uh, you talk to Thor?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Did you tell him he was a jerk?”

This coaxed a small smile from Loki. “Not in so many words.”

“I heard there was some yelling.” 

“Some, yes.”

They locked gazes for a moment, before Darcy held up her hands in surrender. “All right, don’t tell me what you talked about!”

More silence, and then, “We shouted at each other for a bit, and then we talked, and then we shouted some more, and then he left in a towering fury. He doesn’t believe that I’ve—changed,” said Loki with just a hint of a whine. “Have I not improved?”

“It’s not like you can just snap your fingers and be like, ‘All better now!’”

“I am better!” he protested.

“Hey, anything’s better than the raging megalomania.” Loki agreed with a little flip of his fingers. “You’re getting there,” she conceded. 

“’Getting there?’”

“Who was it who got his cot taken away the other night because he pitched a fit?” 

Loki rolled his eyes like the big child he was and flopped over to face away from the front of the cell. 

Darcy took a smug bite of her chocolate cupcake.

***

It was a full week before Thor dared show his face in Jane's lab again. Jane was still a little cool towards him, though she gave him a kiss on the cheek when he walked in. When his looming figure blocked the light from the scatter plot Darcy was working on, she flicked her eyes up to him.

“What?” she said.

“May I speak to you outside?”

Darcy looked to Jane, who gestured her to go ahead. “Okay,” said Darcy to Thor. “But you’re buying me coffee.”

At the Starbucks across the street from Stark Tower, Darcy watched Thor settle much more comfortably into a seat than he would have months ago. It seemed that Thor was slightly more at home in New York all the time. He’d paid for the coffee, and he hadn’t even looked confused at ‘Midgardian coinage.’

Gazing serenely at Thor over her mocha latte, Darcy waited.

“I wish to apologize.”

She smiled into the foam of her drink.

“I am told that—I—the information that I was given—“

Feeling merciful, Darcy waved him off. “It’s cool, whatever, just don’t do it again.” Relief washed over Thor’s face. God, the man was like a giant, plaid-wearing puppy. “So, did Loki yell at you?” She gauged his reaction. “Whoa, did a _lot_ of people yell at you?” Aww, saddest puppy. “Well, good, you totally deserved it. I get that you wanna check on your brother and everything, but—“

“I regret that, in my zeal, I’ve intruded on your affairs.”

“Yeah, keep regretting,” she said, grinning and blowing on her beverage to cool it. “Makes me feel better.”

Thor fiddled with a coffee stirrer for a moment. “I am still concerned that Loki has…” He trailed off, searching for a word.

“Wait.” She put down her drink. “You _still_ don’t believe he’s being real?”

“I have yet to see proof that—“

“I know he’s not all the way better yet, but he’s at least approaching the _normal_ side of cray-cray—“

“—but I have seen no evidence that he is not—“

“Dude, you can’t prove a negative! Like, what do you expect him to do?!” Thor shrugged feebly, at a loss. A glance around the Starbucks revealed a number of hipsters and worn-out businesspeople trying to avoid looking at them. “Ugh,” said Darcy, face-palming. After a few seconds, she reached out and drew her latte to her, slurping from it loudly, then yelping as she burned her tongue. “I know he broke faith with you,” she said to Thor eventually, meeting his eyes again. “I know he did really, really nasty stuff to you, and obvi’ you can’t trust him yet…but do you think you could keep talking to him?” Thor just watched her steadily. “I think it could really help. Like, both of you. Maybe? Okay?”

“’Okay,’ Darcy Lewis,” said Thor solemnly, reaching across the table to put a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Right. Cool. Drink your enormous coffee, then we’ll go back upstairs and Jane can babble at you.” 

Thor grinned.


	10. Transition

Over the next month, Darcy became especially busy with her work for her senior seminar, and was back to pulling some all-nighters trying to keep up. Since Jane insisted, Darcy took the time one evening to bring Erik some pie, but he wouldn't even come out of his room or answer Darcy's knocks. She left the pie on the counter with some information on a few therapists in the area, and Jane said that around 10pm Erik scurried out in just his tighty-whities and brought the pie and the list back into his room, so who knew? Maybe he'd decide to at least call one of them.

And the pie would help a little, Darcy was sure. Pie always helped.

Joe returned from his mother's bedside, and put up a brave front, but it was clear he was really cut up about his mother's condition. Darcy made sure to bring him his favorite foods.

A few times Darcy would walk into the guardroom to find that Loki was incommunicado for the day. Sometimes he'd have thrown things around in his cell (he was low on options for that, so he'd started resorting to throwing books, even the _library_ books, for which Darcy told him off during her next visit), and other times he'd just be curled up on his mattress in the corner, refusing to talk to anybody. These incidents grew fewer and further between as time went on, though, and Loki more and more seemed like a normal Frost-Giant-adopted-by-Asgardians, whatever that meant. Normal for him, at least, which involved rather more snark than most humans Darcy knew.

And Thor still didn't believe Loki was telling the truth, although he was at least talking to him. Darcy and Loki continued to play their questions game, but more and more their questions tended to the uncontroversial side of things, which was fine with Darcy. She had enough to worry about beyond the sanity of an alien former-wannabe-despot.

Except she did worry about that, a bit. Graduation was coming up, and then she'd be heading off to D.C. for a three-part internship that summer, with the hope that one of the organizations would hire her on afterward. Moving away meant leaving Loki in the lurch—he still had his brother, and Joe, and Laura, but...well. He'd miss her, obviously.

Darcy made sure she spun it that way in her own head, because it was definitely _he_ who would be missing _her_.

That's what led to another shouting match with Director Fury, who was living up to his name.

“For the last time, Miss Lewis, this is _not_ a normal prison!”

“No, it's not, 'cause in a _normal_ prison there would have been a trial for the prisoner, and he would have pled 'Not Guilty by Reason of Temporary Insanity' and be in a mental health facility receiving proper treatment!”

“Miss Lewis,” said Fury, leaning back against his desk and pinching the bridge of his nose, “you have been in here for twenty minutes, now. I have a situation developing in Greenland that I need to deal with. What will it take to get you out of my office?”

Darcy pulled her tablet from her bag and shoved it at him. “Here.” Confused, Fury accepted the tablet. “Doctor this up so he can't hack SHIELD or whatever, but set him up for Skype. Hell, he can even use my Netflix subscription if he wants.” Fury gazed down at the tablet blankly. “I promise, he'll be much better-behaved if you give him something to stare at other than a book or the wall.”

Slowly, Fury extended the tablet back to Darcy, and she took it. “You know, you’re damned persistent. It’s too bad you’re not making these good arguments for something that’s really worth your time.”

Pursing her lips in bewilderment, Darcy said, “Do I win?”

“You win,” sighed Fury. “But we don’t need to take your tech: I’ll have a specialist I know look into rigging something up.”

The specialist, it turned out, was _Tony freaking Stark,_ who vaguely remembered Darcy from his party, but was much more impressed that she was the ‘girl who tamed Loki.’

“I heard he hasn’t even tried to off anybody since you showed up,” said Stark, glowing from within with interesting political theories (in Darcy’s eyes, at least). “Nice going.”

“Yeah, uh, thanks,” said Darcy, basking in the light of celebrity. Stark snagged Darcy’s tablet from her hands and, after installing some nifty new software on it, made short work of explaining the principles of it. (“It’s like Skype, only about a quadrillion times better since I programmed it.”)

“We’ll be embedding the StarkPad itself in the wall of the cell tomorrow,” explained one of the SHIELD techs after Tony Stark had breezed out of the room, taking with him a piece of Darcy’s fangirl soul. “You should be able to test the linkup by tomorrow evening.”

***

“Okay,” Darcy announced as she entered the room with Loki’s cell. “I have some good news, and some maybe-not-as-good-but-also-sort-of-good news. Which do you want first?”

Loki tilted his head to the side. “Good news.”

“I got the shadow government people to give you access to movies and TV! Now you can finally watch all that awesome stuff I’ve been telling you about, ‘cause they’re giving you a tablet like mine. Well, not like mine,” she corrected. “Your tablet could probably kick my tablet’s ass and then shatter it into tiny, crying pieces.”

“Why do I suspect this is leading into the not-as-good news?”

“Um, because, I’m, uh.” She focused on the floor. “I’m graduating in a couple of weeks, and, uh, moving away.” Her voice got smaller and smaller as she went along, ending in a pathetic little mumble.

Darcy didn’t look up, but after a short silence she heard an, “Oh.”

“That’s why I made them give you the tablet, though,” she said, finally turning her eyes to Loki, and, oh _no,_ his face had gone all blank like it did when something really nasty was going on. “We’ll be able to call each other and junk. Like, direct line. Look,” she pulled out her own tablet to show him the little icon on her desktop. “’LokiChat!’ You totes have your own software. Tony Stark made it,” she continued, a little hero worship slipping into her voice. “His company has the coolest policies and political outreach program…”

“He offered me a drink, once,” said Loki. “Never did get that drink. Still, I did throw him out of a window,” he concluded, as if such things balanced. Darcy gave him a look of confused consternation. “In the bad old days! Wouldn’t do that anymore…unless provoked.”

“Classy,” said Darcy, leaning against the wall opposite the cell. They both stared into the middle distance for a moment.

“Still, it really is good news for you, though, isn’t it?” said Loki. “Graduation?”

“Yeah,” said Darcy, resolutely _not feeling sad, because that would be stupid._ “And then I have this great internship lined up—I applied like fifty years ago, didn’t think I’d get in, but I am just that awesome that I did. Legislative intern—BOOM—through Richdale University in Washington, D.C. There’s a stipend and everything.”

“Wonderful,” Loki said with a forced-looking smile. “Good for you. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” said Darcy, forcing a smile of her own. “I can, y’know, feel greatness on the horizon or whatever.” They locked eyes for a moment, then Darcy turned away, gathering her things. “I, um,” she chucked a thumb at the door, “I have a thing that I have to—“

“Right,” said Loki.

“I’ll just—I’ll see you tomorrow. Food requests?”

Loki shook his head.

“M’kay, well, I want cookies, so you’re getting cookies.”

It said a great deal about Loki’s progress that Darcy didn’t hear anything crashing as she walked out of the room. On her way past the desk, she heard Joe call, “Congrats, Darcy!” and she gave him a distracted, “Thanks.”

***

Really, once she got out of range of the miasma of Loki’s sulking—Darcy was convinced it was an aura that took up at least a city block—she was actually overwhelmingly excited. Senior week! Graduation! Semi-real grown-up type job! _Washington, D.C.!_

Once she’d finally sent off her senior paper for grading, she was free to start her preparations for moving in earnest. She’d already sent in her notice to her landlord, and begun to pack. This time, packing took awhile longer: since moving to New York City (and being paid in actual money, not just room and board), Darcy had managed to acquire some physical detritus, including at least seven more hats.

Darcy’s hat collection was a thing of beauty.

Having sort of made her peace with Thor, she spent some time tutoring him on how to use Stark Industries’ crazy-awesome technology while Jane was busy interviewing new assistants. Before she left the lab on her last day, she presented Thor with a goodbye gift: a regular human-style claw hammer. “In case you need to fix something around the house. Myeuh-Myeuh’s a little too heavy-duty for do-it-yourself projects, ya know?” Thor thanked her with all the grace of his office as an Asgardian prince.

Much of her last two weeks was spent hanging outside of Loki’s cell, giving him suggestions of which shows and movies to watch first. They briefly tested the connection between her tablet and his (“There! Can you see me?” “You’re standing ten feet away from me.” “Yup, sarcasm comin’ through loud and clear!”). Loki’s tablet was mounted in the wall across from the mattress that was all he had left of his cot. The screen was just at the right height that he had to kneel to use the touchscreen properly. Never let it be said that Director Fury didn’t have a cruel sense of humor.

Somewhere in all of this it came out that Joe was a closet movie musical fan, when he outright demanded that Loki put _The Wizard of Oz_ on his ‘to watch’ list. The next day, Darcy brought a giant bucket of popcorn, and she and Joe squeezed up against the far wall, Loki reclining on his mattress, and they all watched _The Wizard of Oz_. After the film, Loki pronounced it to be surreal and somewhat adolescent, whereupon Joe put his fingers in his ears and sang “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” loudly until Darcy got Loki to shut up.

On her last day in New York, a Saturday, Darcy made her way to Jane and Erik’s apartment to deliver her parting gifts to them. 

“Erik’s in his room,” Jane said, shrugging. “I guess you can see if you can get him to come out.”

“Erik!” Darcy called, pounding on the door to Erik’s bedroom. “I’m leaving forever and you’ll never see me again!”

“You said you’d come back and visit,” said Jane, more quietly.

“Shhh, don’t tell him, maybe he’ll actually come out and say ‘bye,” whispered Darcy back. “ERIK! GOTTA PRESENT FOR YOU!”

“All right, all right,” grumbled Erik, cracking the door. “What is it?”

“New kilt.” Darcy held it in front of her hips and shimmied a little. “Gonna miss you, Doc Selvig!”

Erik rubbed at his bristly unshaven chin for a moment, then gruffly reached out to pull Darcy into a one-armed hug. “You’re a good kid, deep down,” said Erik. “Very deep down.” Darcy pressed the kilt into his hands so that it was held up over his tighty-whities, and then Erik scooted back and closed the door behind him.

“I left your present in the living room,” said Darcy over her shoulder to Jane, making her way back to the front of the apartment. 

“Thor told me you’re still planning to talk to Loki after you move.” When Darcy turned around, it was to the sight of Jane, arms folded, the picture of petite brunette wrath.

“…Yeah…?” said Darcy. “I’m gonna stay in touch with a lotta people: you, Erik, Thor, Bao, Markie, Joe, Laura—“

“Were the last two on the list Loki’s guards?”

“Um, yeah,” said Darcy, getting a little annoyed. “Is there an issue here, or just an interrogation?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said tightly. “It just seems like you value certain…acquaintances…more than others, that’s all.”

“Oh, I get it. I don’t work for you anymore, so now you can judge me.”

“Erik has been _locking himself in his room_ this past month, because of you!” burst out Jane, gesturing wildly.

“And I brought him a kilt to say goodbye! What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal?! The big deal is that he’s not getting any better!”

“I gave him a list of therapists!”

“You gave Loki _therapy!_ ” shouted Jane, pointing the general direction of SHIELD headquarters. 

Darcy waved her arms in front of her, trying to defuse the situation. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not _exactly_ a licensed therapist, Jane! Anyway,” she cast about for something else to say, “anyway, Loki helped save your life! And my life—all our lives in Greenwich!”

“Yes, after he tried to take all our lives last year! Right here! Noticed any of the hundreds of construction sites around, Darcy?” spat Jane. “Loki drove Erik crazy!”

“Yeah, well, Odin drove Loki crazy! Not everything is black and white, Jane!” 

Jane glared at Darcy across the couch, red-faced and disheveled. Abruptly, Darcy pulled out the large garbage bag she’d brought with her and shoved it in front of Jane, opening it. “Here. Your gift.” She’d picked up just about every mini box of cereal they’d had at the grocery store, so that Jane could have some variety in her breakfasts. Jane gathered the top of the bag together, still frowning at Darcy. “I guess you don’t want to come to my graduation anymore.”

Saying nothing, Jane cast her eyes to the side, still furious.

“Right,” said Darcy. She picked up her purse, and made to turn to the door, at the last moment swiveling so her hand was directly under Jane’s nose. “You know, I think Erik’s pretty cool, but he’s not _my_ father figure: he’s yours. You should think about whether you’re really angry with _me_ right now. Because you could’ve been helping him this whole time.” Darcy threw up her hands. “That’s it, I’m done.” She walked out the door without another word, feeling strangely hollow.

***

The going-away party in the SHIELD basement that evening washed a little of the bitter taste away from Darcy’s leave-taking. Jamal was the one on duty, but Laura and Joe came in anyway. Laura had even baked a cake, which she said was not something she usually did, so Darcy should feel super-special.

Darcy did, in fact, feel super-special.

Gifts were given here, as well: Darcy’d gotten Joe the soundtrack to _Carousel_ , a one-volume encyclopedia of TV and movies for Loki, and a Sigmund Freud action figure for Laura. After some wheedling, Darcy managed to get Jamal into the room with the cell to hang out with them. They all ate cake and chatted, and it was only a little bit weird that one of the party guests was behind an impenetrable magical barrier.

Slightly weirder when it came time to go and Darcy gave a hug to everyone except Loki. She made one small movement towards the cell, as if to place a hand on the barrier, but in the end stopped herself and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

“Of course,” said Loki in hushed tones.

“You guys all have my cell phone number, right?” said Darcy to Laura, Joe, and Jamal, and when Jamal responded in the negative there was a slight bustle of movement to get the number entered into his phone. Eventually, she exited with a heavy feeling in her chest that she decided to write off as indigestion.


	11. Settling In

Free of her New York responsibilities, Darcy threw herself into Senior Week with abandon. Her Culver friends welcomed her back and gleefully dragged her away from the planned Senior Week activities (ugh, so unnecessarily expensive) and hied themselves off to their favorite establishment for pizza and beer (for nine people, expensive, but absolutely necessary). For the rest of the week much of the group made day trips to Washington, D.C., only an hour away, to explore various national monuments and make duck faces in front of them, and to scout out the locations for Darcy’s upcoming internship.

It was all wonderfully distracting, and every night Darcy collapsed onto her temporary dorm bed too tipsy to think about how she’d burned her bridges with Jane, or to, y’know, okay, _miss_ any of her friends from New York. Not that she did. ‘Cause she was foot-loose and fancy free, as was Darcy’s habit.

The night before her graduation, though, Darcy fumbled to lock the door to her teeny-weeny dorm room, and flomped down on her bed with her tablet, pressing the ‘LokiChat’ icon for the first time since leaving. “TA-DA!” she cried, throwing her arms in the air when Loki appeared on her screen. “It’s your first drunk dial! Ancient Earth tradition,” she confided. “Okay, maybe not _ancient,_ but it’s like a rite of passage or whatever.”

“Hello, Darcy,” Loki said, amused.

In the morning, Darcy had a hazy recollection of saying to Loki that ‘Jane HATES me,’ but she didn’t remember his reply, or when she got to bed, or how she had acquired her very attractive eyeliner mustache. She woke up just barely in time to scrub her face, slap on some makeup, and throw on a dress, followed by cap and gown before hurrying down to the gym for the ceremony. Fortunately, she had a whole hour-and-a-half of boring speeches to sit through in order to fully wake up. No real hangover, thank God! The first half-hour of the ceremony, most of the students were craning their necks around, trying to catch glimpses of their families. Darcy quickly spotted her mom and dad and surreptitiously waved to them. Chelsea hadn’t been able to make it—one of the pitfalls of owning your own business.

About an hour in, when one member of the faculty was droning into the microphone about the graduates’ bright futures, there was a stir near the back of the gymnasium. The sound of scuffling chairs and some echoey apologies could be heard. Leaning back in her seat, Darcy spotted a very familiar head of blond hair as its owner settled into his seat. Grinning broadly, she forced herself not to disrupt the ceremony any further by jumping out of her seat and flailing.

Then they started calling people’s names. Darcy was glad her graduating class was a small one, as this part passed quickly, and before long she was shaking the Dean’s hand and grinning into a flashing camera. Then there was the recessional and she was out on the quad with her classmates, jumping up and down with her diploma and throwing her cap into the air. Her parents found her relatively quickly.

“Let me see,” said her dad, snagging her diploma. “Wow, you officially ‘Know About Lots of Political Science Stuff.’”

Her mother leaned in and pretended to read, “’Darcy went to college to get more knowledge.’”

“They send the real diplomas out in the mail,” explained Darcy, and hugged them both. “They just gave us the cases today.” A familiar figure loomed in her peripheral vision and she smiled. “Hey!” 

“Darcy,” said Thor. Whenever he said people’s names it sounded like he was knighting them. “You have accomplished much.”

“Is that fancy-talk for ‘congrats, graduate’?” Grinning, she pulled Thor into a hug. After, he stepped aside to reveal Jane, wearing a nice blouse and trousers, and Erik, looking stately in a suit jacket and a beige utili-kilt.

“Um, who…?” prompted Darcy’s father.

“Oh! Mom, Dad, this is Dr. Jane Foster—I interned for her for, like, a whole year—and this is her colleague, Dr. Erik Selvig, and uh, this is, uh, Thor.”

Darcy hadn’t realized how tiny her parents were until this moment when they had to step back to take in the majesty that was Thor in a suit. “Nice to meet you,” said Darcy’s mother. Hands were shaken.

“Weren’t you the one who…?” began Darcy’s father, addressing Thor, but Darcy cut him off,

“We should totally go get free food!” She gently shoved her parents’ backs until they took the hint. Thor and Erik followed, leaving Jane slightly behind. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I, um, well,” said Jane, scratching the back of her neck.

“You got Erik to come out of his cave. That’s cool.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “I’m sorry, Darcy.”

Amidst the hordes of reveling graduates and their families, Jane was a tiny, awkward island. “I’m glad you came,” said Darcy, after a long moment. “If only to prove to my professors that you actually exist.”

“Hey, I exist!” protested Jane. “They don’t think I exist?”

“We should go get cake. I haven’t eaten breakfast.”

They went to get cake. It was the best breakfast ever.

***

“So, um, sorry I drunk-dialed you.” To take a break from settling into her new place, Darcy had given her new roommates the excuse of needing to make an important phone call and ducked into her partially-furnished new bedroom. Talking to Loki in a place where the sun was actually shining was a bit surreal, though.

“I’m told that the apology is the ceremonial conclusion to this proud and ancient tradition.” 

“Hey, have you checked out the special features of this program yet?” Darcy poked some of the buttons across the bottom of her screen, and the figure of Loki, sitting at the edge of his mattress, turned several different colors in rapid succession. “Cool.”

A green-tinged Loki rolled his eyes.

“You totally missed me.”

“The standard of pastries here has notably gone down, I’ll admit.” He leaned a little closer, squinting at the screen. “Are those your new living quarters?”

“Yeah, here, lemme show you.” Picking up the tablet, she gave it a slow spin so he could see the room. “Pretty awesome room, right? Hardwood floors.”

Loki’s voice was tinny over the tiny speakers. “Larger than your last home. You might even be able to stand up, take a few paces.”

“The best part is that I can’t touch both walls at the same time! Drawback, though: roommates.”

“Do they know you’re speaking to me?”

“Naw, I locked the door.” Darcy waved a hand dismissively. “How’s your crash course in pop culture coming?” 

This prompted a long discussion of human entertainments and their varying degrees of disconnect from the audience. Loki claimed to prefer live theatre, but Darcy said he just hadn’t watched the right movies yet. Then followed a lengthy dialogue on Loki’s choices for prospective future viewing, which ended with a good deal of light-hearted complaining on Loki’s part about Joe’s movie-musical obsession. After ten minutes, she set her tablet up on top of her bureau and resumed unpacking boxes. After half an hour, one of her new roommates, Steph, knocked on her door and asked if she wanted to hit up the grocery store with them.

“I guess I’d better go,” said Darcy, with some regret in her voice. They signed off and Darcy grabbed her wallet, ready to head out.

“Was that your boyfriend?” asked Steph.

“Naw, I don’t have one of those. Just someone I know from New York.”

***

The new roommates were pretty chill. Steph was a visual artist, which Darcy found extremely cool, since she was usually picked last for Pictionary teams. Randolph—he went by Randy—was a grad student at Richdale, which was the same school that ran Darcy’s internship, where he was studying American Politics. Randy had not only a great deal of interesting things to say about political theory, but also a great big shaggy dog named Franklin.

Settling in didn’t take too long—it never did, for Darcy, she was damned adaptable—which was good news, since her internship began only three days after moving in, at which time she found herself faced with an extremely difficult issue. After several tense minutes standing in the middle of her bedroom panicking about said issue, Darcy had eliminated the possibilities of calling her parents or Chelsea (they none of them were up this early), or of waking one of her roommates for advice (they hardly knew each other, didn’t seem cool to wake them at the buttcrack of dawn), and went for the last resort.

The chat program had a plain old boring telephone ring while waiting for a connection, and it rang five full times before Loki appeared onscreen, looking sleep-tousled and a little grouchy.

“I need your help,” Darcy told him.

“At _five-thirty in the morning?_ ”

“Do I look okay?” Stepping back, Darcy gestured at her outfit, which consisted of a grey skirt, white blouse, and a red cardigan.

Loki gave her the most disbelieving look she’d ever seen him make, and then scrubbed at his eyes a bit.

“You look like a kindergartener who just woke up from naptime.” He stared at her some more, expression surprisingly unguarded. “ _Loki,_ ” she whined.

“You want my opinion on _Midgardian_ fashion?” he said, voice full of scorn.

“I’m supposed to look professional. It’s my first day.”

Rubbing at his face some more, he said, “ _Five-thirty in the morning._ ”

“I wasn’t sure what to do with my hair.”

“I feel that we are not—actually—communicating.”

“Augh, I don’t know how to do grown-up stuff!” Throwing her hands down by her sides, and her head back, Darcy paced in a nervous circle. She should not be fazed by this. This was not a thing that should faze her. But business casual and an office setting—this was territory she had not yet traversed. “Can I just go back to college? I get to wear jeans there. And hats. I _like_ hats.”

Heaving a deep breath, Loki said in a withering tone, “Darcy. You are the woman who walked into the prison of a dangerous international criminal and offered him pie. When presented with a window between realms, you threw shoes at it.”

“I did that, yeah,” she admitted with a little smile. “I’m pretty badass.”

“Yes. This is nothing that you cannot handle.”

“I can totally handle this. You hear that, dress code? Your ass is handled.” Darcy paused. “That sounded wrong.”

“Just—“ he yawned, “just walk in there with your normal impertinent attitude and—“

“Should I be insulted?” Darcy grinned.

“May I go back to sleep now?”

“So I look okay?”

Loki looked her up and down appraisingly. “Your clothing is clean, your hair is tidy…I might lose the sweater…”

“ _Knew_ it!” She threw the sweater to the floor and dove for her closet, finding a blazer there. “Yeah?” She buttoned the jacket.

“Better. Sleep now?”

“Yes, you have served your duty as ‘friend.’ Thanks, dude.” With an exhausted wave, he signed off, leaving Darcy in her room with an entire hour remaining in which to panic before she had to catch the Metro.

***

The first day of Darcy’s internship went well, followed swiftly by the second, third, fourth, and fifth days going well, and before she knew it she was getting into the swing of being a semi-professional grown-up kind of person. 

At work, anyway. As time passed and she got more settled into her new job and home, she developed a routine. She’d go to her internship, which always kept her hopping, and at night she’d spend time with her roommates or with friends from Culver who’d moved into the area. Sometimes she’d take Franklin the dog out for a walk, to help Randy out but also because she loved Franklin, and not just because he was named after FDR.

She kept in touch with Jane, Thor, and Erik via email. All were rather sporadic emailers—Jane was distracted by science, Erik was…still struggling with some things, and Thor was just hilariously out-of-touch with technology. All of his emails were riddled with typos and mistranslations of Midgardian customs.

Chatting with Loki was much, much easier now that she could do it from the comfort of her own home, so Darcy found herself pressing that ‘LokiChat’ icon much more often than she would have predicted. Sometimes Laura or Joe would jump in for some catching-up as well (never Jamal. Well, she glimpsed him once. Everyone said he was still just really shy). The guards had to use a form of charades to get their point across, though, as Loki’s tablet wasn’t the best at picking up audio from the speakers connecting his cell to the outside. Joe kept her apprised of his mother’s prognosis via email (she was responding well to chemo, he said, or as well as anyone ever responds to chemo), and on the weekends when he wasn’t at work, Laura and Loki kept her apprised of Joe’s well-being.

Mostly, though, she’d just chat with Loki in her off-time.

“I talk to you too much,” she told him one day as she was painting her nails. “I should get a hobby.”

“You should,” he agreed, looking up from his book and blinking innocently at her when she glared at him. “I thought the internet was your hobby.”

“Oh, yeah.” The nail polish chose this moment to glob all over Darcy’s finger. “Fuck!” Jerking her hand away, she knocked over the little bottle of polish, spilling it all over her bedsheets. “ _Shit!_ This is why I don’t ever do my nails!”

“I did warn you,” said Loki unsympathetically as Darcy darted across the room for some paper towels.

“Thanks a ton, you’re so helpful.” She blotted at her sheets with the paper towels for a moment, then sighed heavily and started stripping her bed, relocating the active tablet to her desk as she did so. “So how’s your brother doing?”

“My brother?”

“Yeah, y’know, 6’5”, all muscley, blond…”

“He is…well. He still does not believe me,” he grumbled. “Even Laura has told him I’ve changed.”

“What an assbutt!” Darcy pulled clean sheets from the hamper at the end of her bed. 

“He says he might bring this ‘Jane Foster’ to meet me.”

“No _way!_ ”

“Thor was never one to study magic, so—“

“Did he run out of sciencey stuff to talk about with her?”

“I doubt she will actually come here.”

Finished making the bed, Darcy brought her tablet back over and set up her bottle of nail polish remover, to start fixing her globby mistake. “I dunno, the lure of quantum whatevers is great for Jane. You’ll probably like her, she’s really enthusiastic about physics and stuff.”

“When I saw her before she was mostly unconscious.”

“Hey, look at us,” smiled Darcy, taking a break from scrubbing at her nails with a cotton ball. “It’s like a slumber party. I’m doing my nails and we’re gossiping about people we know…”

“Except that you failed at ‘doing your nails,’” he said, smirking.

“All right, just for that, you’re underwater for the rest of the night.” Darcy poked at one of the buttons along the bottom of the screen, activating the filter that made Loki look like he was sitting on a mattress at the bottom of a fish tank. “Serve you right.”


	12. Montage

“It sounds as though you simply do not like your work,” Loki was saying. The lights were out, and she had her tablet propped against her spare pillow next to her on the bed as she slowly drifted off to sleep. Her internship had kept her out really late into the evening at a protest downtown. Loki had pulled his mattress up to his tablet, so he could sit on it and be close to the screen. It was dark in his cell; the only light came from a glowing blue orb he’d magicked up to float near his head. 

“It kinda blows,” confessed Darcy. “But I’m leaving soon for the next part of my internship—there’s three sections at three different locations, so I can try out a bunch of stuff. It’s supposed to be, like, testing me out to see if I fit somewhere so they can hire me for really real work.”

“Supposing you don’t ‘fit’ in any of these places?”

Darcy shrugged, her pajamas shifting against the bedsheets with a rustling noise. “Go somewhere else, I guess. I’m kinda used to moving around.”

“Fury was in here today.”

“What'd he want?”

“He had some sort of digital image he wanted me to decipher.”

“You knew exactly what it was, didn't you?” Darcy grinned sleepily and Loki grinned right back.

“That would be telling.”

“What if it's of, like, world-saving importance, though?” she speculated. “What if someone's coming to blow up Earth or something and you're the only one who can give us advance warning?”

“I'm not.”

“I'm _just saying,_ ” said Darcy, chortling. “You'd get blown up, too, if we got blown up.”

“I don't know that I'd tell Fury. I'd likely let somebody know, though. Just to save my own skin, of course.”

“Yeah, of course. You're definitely not out to save anyone else.”

***

“You should give this up,” said Loki, watching Darcy struggle with the project in front of her. “It requires dexterity.”

“Ouch, bro! I'm totally dextrous, _thanks._ ” She made a daring attempt to place the strand of yarn in the correct position, then somehow ended up tangling it with first the skein, then the project, and finally around the needles. “UGH,” she said, and tossed the whole mess to the side. “Knitting was supposed to be so _easy._ ”

“Perhaps something out-of-doors?”

“What, like sky-diving?” Darcy busied herself poking buttons to change the desktop of the chat app. There'd been a software upgrade the other day ( _Tony Stark_ had sent her a software upgrade!!), and she hadn't explored all the new options yet. “Too expensive. Plus, I'm basically allergic to the outdoors. Physical activity gives me hives.”

Loki sighed. “I suppose you're stuck with me.”

“Hey, I hang out with friends!” protested Darcy. “I went out to the roller-skating rink with Randy and my friend Justina the other day.” One of the buttons she prodded on the screen made it look as if Loki was wearing a propeller beanie. She decided to stick with that one. “Wait.” She stopped what she was doing to look straight at Loki. “This isn't weird, is it? That we talk this much?”

“Why would it be ‘weird’?”

Darcy thought about it for a minute, then shrugged and said, “Ehh. I dunno. So, you started any new TV shows?”

***

“Franklin!” Darcy cried as the big dog nosed her bedroom door open, making himself at home. She finished pulling up her sock and gestured from the tablet on her desk to the dog. “This is Franklin the dog.”

Loki shot a glance Franklin's way. “Am I to say 'hello'?”

“If you wanted to be _polite,_ ” said Darcy, right as Steph appeared at the door.

“What's _that?_ ” asked Steph after a few stunned seconds, staring straight at Darcy's tablet.

“Oh. Um,” said Darcy, casting about wildly for an explanation. “It's, I'm, I'm—beta-testing a new software. It's, um, it's like a gag app thing. Like Siri, but with--”

“With a mass murderer?” Steph stepped forward, fascinated, and Darcy grabbed her other sock, ramming it onto her foot. “Cool, I guess.”

“Yeah, it's super-secret, though, no one else is supposed to know about it.”

“How does it work?”

Loki's face, on the screen, had gone blank and impassive. “You just ask it a question,” said Darcy. “Like, uh, 'Hey, Loki, how's the weather on Asgard today?'”

“How the hell should I know?” said Loki. He’d been working on his human slang.

Steph burst out laughing, and Darcy forced herself to laugh along. “That's pretty ridiculous.”

“Were you coming in to ask if I wanted to walk Franklin?” Darcy said, stepping in front of her tablet and hitting the 'off' button. “'Cause I was just about to take him out.”

“Would you mind?” asked Steph, diverted. “I have a deadline for a gallery opening this week.”

“Sure, no problem.” It wasn't until she got outside with Franklin that she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.

***

“Are you _sure_ this isn't weird?” Stepping out of the shower, Darcy snatched her towel off the rack and started drying her hair.

Loki's voice sounded from the tablet which was leaned against a tissue box, facing away from her. “Not at all. Your washroom has lovely wallpaper.”

“Hunh,” grunted Darcy. Bending at the waist, she began combing out the back of her hair.

***

Other than a few days when Loki just let the chat app ring at him (presumably he wasn't feeling fit for conversation—Darcy knew that he was still talking some stuff through with Thor and Joe, and sometimes Laura, now that Darcy had transitioned to steadfast-long-distance friend), she was on the line with Loki at least once a day. It occurred to Darcy that maybe it was time to get out of her bedroom and really get herself a genuine hobby.

So Monday morning she walked into her internship, pointed at one of the other interns (Georges, he was some kind of exchange intern from Canada or somewhere), and said, “Date? Tonight? You, me, dinner.”

“Uh, sure,” stuttered Georges.

“Great, cool, gimme your number, I'll text you tonight with details.” Relinquishing her phone, Darcy allowed Georges to input his number, and he smiled nervously at her as she headed to her workstation.

The date was all right, she thought. Georges was a total sweetheart, if a little quiet, and without much of a sense of humor. Or, y'know, much that was interesting to say. Pretty to look at, though, she supposed, if that was your idea of a thrilling evening. Which, for her, it wasn’t.

Okay, the date was not great. Darcy just made an effort not to seem too rude, and gave Georges a perfunctory end-of-date kiss outside the restaurant. His breath smelled like tacos (they'd had Mexican). Darcy wasn't sure if that counted in his favor or not.

***

Georges made it clear that he was definitely interested in a second date, but Darcy definitely wasn’t, so she took to avoiding him at work, hoping he'd get the idea. The following week she asked another dude out on a date—this time on an online dating site that Randy had recommended. She had her tablet out and connected to LokiChat while she selected a proper date outfit. By now she'd acquired a good deal more business casual clothing than she ever expected to own in her life.

“Dress?” she asked, holding one up.

“How well do you know this man?” Loki said skeptically.

“His profile pic looked cute,” shrugged Darcy. “And his political affiliations line up with mine.”

“The things you consider important in a potential mate...” His tone suggested that he thought her hopeless.

“What, I dunno! I liked the cut of his jib,” she joked.

“Sometimes it is as though you're speaking a foreign language.”

“You said you can speak any language,” Darcy taunted.

“Not if you're using unfamiliar idioms,” he almost-whined. “I've yet to uncover the meaning of 'going postal'.”

Darcy just cackled and held up another dress for consideration. “Purple?”

“Too low-cut.”

“Oh, sorry, _Dad._ ” A skirt and a blouse.

“Why am _I_ helping you choose this?”

“'Cause Justina couldn't come over and Randy isn't home, and they are my official fashion advisers. Also, what else do you have to do?”

“I told Joe I would watch _Moulin Rouge,_ ” said Loki with a scowl. “That shirt is wrong for the weather. Show me the next option.”

***

“Okay, that's my truth,” said Darcy. “Your turn. Why'd you lie about your age?”

Flinching, Loki tried for a cunning grin. “I wondered when you'd figure that out.”

“Had a long phone call with Thor and Jane the other day,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Found out something _veeerrry_ interesting about your life-span.”

Face-palming, Loki said, “There's no getting out of this, is there.”

“So apparently Odin's closer to 5,000 years old? Huh?” Darcy pointed a finger at the screen. “You knew I wanted to know your relative age, didn't you? You dink!” She stuck her tongue out at him, and he stuck his tongue out back at her. “All this time I thought you were like my age, and really--” he face-palmed again, clearly unwilling to look at her, “--you're just like a bratty teenager! You're only, like, seventeen!”

“I'm over a thousand years old!” he defended, without much hope.

“You _dink!_ ” she repeated.

***

Darius (the dude from the dating website) was interesting enough to warrant a second date, so Darcy took him up on his offer of pizza and bowling. They were halfway through their first game, Darcy chattering along happily, when Darius pointed out, “You talk about this one friend of yours a lot.”

“Oh,” she said, stopping short. “I guess we’re besties?”

Darius had a semi-skeptical look on his face for such a long moment that Darcy considered walking out, before he recovered with, “I’ll have to meet him sometime. Sounds like a funny guy.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling with relief. “He is.”

***

It was late Saturday night, and Darcy had propped herself up against her headboard with a number of pillows, tablet on her knees. Loki’s image was once again lit only by a glowing magic orb. Having discovered another new function of the chat app, Darcy was drawing things on virtual Loki’s face. “Is it my turn?” she asked.

“…Yes…what are you drawing?”

“Giving you a beard,” said Darcy, yawning. She knew he could see himself in the corner of his screen. 

He studied her handiwork for a moment, then reached out to his screen and started drawing on her image as well. Darcy saw a pink bonnet begin to appear on her head.

“I want a mustache,” she complained, but Loki didn’t even spare her a glance. She thought for a moment, then said, “Fine, here’s my question. Did I ever ask you how you found out you were adopted?”

“…No, you didn’t.” They drew in silence for a moment. “I wasn’t meant to find out…we were on Jotunheim, and one of the warriors touched my bare arm. Where Volstagg was burned, I remained unharmed—and I saw my skin…change. It wasn’t until later, when I held the Casket of Ancient Winters, and transformed, that my suspicions were confirmed.”

“Whoa, wait.” Darcy stopped drawing. “You’re saying Frost Giants aren’t just, like, taller? They look different, too?”

“They’re hideous. Monsters.”

“Racism,” she sang. “Can I see, though?”

“What?”

“You said you looked different. Can I see?”

Genuinely puzzled, Loki said, “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Do you seek to taunt me?”

“Would I taunt you?”

“Yes,” he said frankly. “You do it at least once a day.”

“Pleeeeeease,” begged Darcy, shaking her shoulders. She saw mini-Darcy’s half-finished bonnet bouncing around in the corner of her screen. “I promise I won’t make fun. Even if I’m _really, really_ tempted.”

“I don’t know that I can willingly change.”

“Well, what made it happen last time?”

“Extreme cold…”

Darcy grinned and bounced up and down expectantly. Loki sighed, and waved a hand, and shortly after Darcy saw ice crystals forming in the corners of Loki’s cell. Quickly, she erased the cartoon beard from the screen. 

A short time later, Loki turned blue. “Oh my God!” shrieked Darcy, covering her face. Loki flinched, and Darcy brought her hands down to reveal a delighted smile. “That is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen.” Blue!Loki smirked at her. “Shut up, yeah, _okay._ That’s what Frost Giants look like? I thought you’d get taller or something.”

“Are you implying that I’m small?”

“Not at all, your frostiness.”

“And you are not frightened?” There was an edge to his voice, even though he was still feigning a smile.

Darcy shrugged. “It’s still you. I can’t be scared of you after you whined about the time I got your cookies from a grocery store instead of a bakery. So does this change like your whole body chemistry or something? Or are you just a different color? Ooh! Can you do special Frost Giant magic?”

The look of confusion on his face was kind of hilarious. “I—don’t know. I can make ice?”

“But do Frost Giants live somewhere that’s really cold? I mean, duh, that must be why they’re ‘Frost Giants.’ How come you didn’t know you looked like this, though?” 

“My—Odin said I changed appearance when he…retrieved me from Jotunheim.”

“You were just a baby, though, right?”

“You are truly not repulsed?”

He looked so desperate and lost that she had to put him out of his misery. “ _No._ Man, you really internalized that racism. Look, you just have to spin it to yourself—you’re just a different color, okay?—just say, like, I dunno, instead of saying your eyes are blood red call ‘em ruby red or something.”

“’Ruby’ red.”

“Hey, I’m trying, okay! C’mon, blue’s totally a good look on you.” The frost was beginning to dissolve on Loki’s end of the line, and soon he was back to being the palest white guy ever. “So it’s really not a spell that makes you look all pasty and stuff?” He gave her a long-suffering look. “What? You’re so pale you practically glow in the dark.”

“It’s not a spell, no. I would prefer it to be: then I could at least _control_ the transformation.”

“No, but that’s cool, though. It means you do it unconsciously. It’s like having two different accents. You know, like if someone grows up in two different places, they’ll have the accents from both and they can switch back and forth? I knew someone in high school who could do that. So you have two different looks: Asgard dude and Yogurt Dude. Nifty. It’s like dual citizenship.”

“You behave as if it’s a good thing that I’ll never know my true form.”

Darcy’s brow creased. “I’m saying…that you’re you no matter what you look like. Asgardian or not, you already know who you are, so who cares what color your skin is?”

“Or if my eyes are ‘ruby red’ or not?”

“Shaddup,” grinned Darcy. “Hey, are you gonna finish drawing that bonnet on me or not? ‘Cause I’m definitely gonna draw kawaii anime cheeks on your face.”

“I have no idea what that means.”


	13. Crisis

A month passed. Three more dates with Darius passed, as well, including two that ended with overnights at his place before that relationship went the way of all of Darcy’s past boyfriends, which was to say: nowhere. She began the second section of her internship, and this location demanded a good deal more of her time, so she spent less time hanging out with friends and more time sleeping. If she did use LokiChat, it tended to wind up with the both of them reading on either end of the line, until Darcy eventually nodded off, only to wake up with drained batteries on her tablet and marks on her face from sleeping on her book.

Life had become so dull and ordinary that it only made sense some excitement would soon arrive in the form of explosions.

“GAH!” cried Darcy, slamming the bathroom door. Fully clothed, she clambered into the bathtub, clutching her tablet to her chest. Flinching as another explosion sounded in the distance, she used a shaking finger to press the correct icon on the screen. Enormous crashing noises, closer this time. “WAH!” she yelled just as the connection went through, startling Loki.

“What? What is it?” _CRASH!_ The house shook a little. “What’s happening?”

“There’s some kinda _thing_ attacking D.C.?” Darcy offered.

“Are you in your _washtub?_ ”

Darcy swished the shower curtain shut, as if that would protect her from the continuing destruction outside. “It’s supposed to work in hurricanes. Or tornadoes. I think. The bomb shelter across the street was all full up.” She paused. “Or maybe they just didn’t want to open the door. Anyway.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” said Loki, and vanished from the screen. She vaguely heard him yelling for Joe, and huddled in closer on herself, eyeing the ceiling as if something was about to rip through it. Then Loki came back. “Joe is contacting his superiors, but he says they already know.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you see what’s causing this?”

“It’s something big and purple. With tentacles. I didn’t want to get too close, ya know, what with all the smashing and the maniacal laughter.” Another explosion. _Why_ didn’t she have access to the basement in this building?! “I just ran out of the office. I figured they couldn’t fire me if I took a half-day to avoid Death by Supervillain.”

Joe appeared in the corner of the screen and yelled something indistinct, waving frantically. Loki turned back to the screen calmly and said, “Joe says ‘hello.’” Darcy let out a choked laugh. More indistinct yelling on Joe’s part. “He says ‘help is on the way.’”

“Oh, good. Tell them I’ll wait right here, 185 Lynmore Road, apartment C, bathroom at the end of the hall. If they bring coffee, I promise I’ll give them a tip.” She saw Joe flash a thumbs-up in the corner of the screen, and then disappear out of the frame. There was an additional enormous crunching noise from outside, more distant this time, but Darcy cringed all the same. Casting her gaze back at the tablet, she saw that Loki looked about 30 times as panicked as she was feeling. “Hey, you don’t get to freak out, that’s my job, I’m the one in crisis!”

“I will stay calm if you will stay calm.” Darcy listened for more crashing, moving to either end of the bathtub at times to get as far away from the noise as she could. After a few minutes of tense quiet, Loki spoke again, as if someone were wrenching the words from his throat. “I am sorry I cannot be there to help you.” 

Darcy blinked in surprise. “Hey, no sweat. SHIELD or whoever would probably think you’re siding with the purple tentacle thing anyway and go after you, so.”

“Yes.” 

“Thanks anyway, though.”

Another few moments of tense silence. “Why are you not ‘telephoning’ your parents?”

“Oh. Um.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, Darcy bit her lip. “The cell phone tower’s down. Anyway. The internet might go out, too, so brace yourself.” Loki gave a terse nod, and they sat together, miles apart, until the maelstrom ended.

***

Rescuers actually did show up at her apartment, in the form of Thor and Steve, all done up in their Avengers outfits. Unfortunately, they did not bring coffee. When Thor came crashing through the front door, shouting her name with typical enthusiasm, Darcy stood on shaky legs, stiff from being in one position for so long, and left her tablet forgotten in the bottom of the tub. The internet had cut out an hour before, but she’d kept it on in the hopes that somehow the maniac attacking the city would miraculously reconnect the wires outside (or something along those lines).

“Hey, Thor!” She cracked the door to the bathroom and stumbled into the hall. Spotting her, Thor swept down the hallway and scooped her up into a bone-cracking bear hug. He was covered in dust, rubble, and something damp that she was going to, for the sake of her sanity, assume was honest and heroic sweat. “Loving the personal service.” Catching sight of Steve in her front hall, Darcy waved over Thor’s shoulder, since he was still holding her off the ground. “Hey, Cap. Nice job saving, um, the world?” she hazarded.

“Just the city, this time,” Steve said with a smile, pulling off his cowl.

“You guys want coffee?”

In what was probably the most surreal scene out of Darcy’s incredibly bizarre life, Thor and Captain America sat down at her apartment’s tiny kitchen table and sipped coffee, to be shortly joined by (the actual— _holy crapzoids_ —) Black Widow, in all her skintight bodysuit kickass glory, and then a slightly panicky and confused Randy. Darcy served them all coffee with trembling hands, and eventually she and Randy remembered to let Franklin out of Randy’s room, to the overwhelming joy of Steve and Thor. Steve confessed that he’d always wanted a big dog when he was a kid, but he’d been allergic. Poor Randy didn’t really know how to react to anything that was going on, so he just sat there sipping his coffee and nodding.

At one point, Black Widow sat bolt upright and put two fingers to her ear, speaking quietly, like she had some kind of Bluetooth implant or something. Turning to Darcy she asked, “Do you have a phone?”

“No reception,” she said, offering her cell to the woman.

“Stark, can you get me some kind of satellite linkup?” Black Widow muttered under her breath, and then turning to Thor said, “You’ll need to step outside with me.”

Concerned, Thor followed her back down the hallway in the direction of Darcy’s room. Darcy clapped a hand to her face. “Oh shit, I’ve been so wound up that I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” asked Steve. Darcy glanced at Randy, who, though clearly still processing the events of the day, took the hint to suddenly claim a need to use the bathroom.

Once Randy’d disappeared to the other end of the apartment, Darcy said, “I was talking to Loki until the internet went out.”

“You’re still talking to him?” 

“Yeah, well, on my tablet.” She shifted uncomfortably, and was about to say more when Thor and Black Widow came back into the kitchen. Black Widow placed Darcy’s phone back on the kitchen table.

Thor clapped a hand on her shoulder. “My brother was much concerned about your well-being.”

“Did he threaten to turn me into something scaly?”

“Yes,” said Thor with a conspiratorial smile.

Darcy grinned up at him. “Oh, man, he must’ve been really worried, then.” They laughed and then both realized at the same time that the other two present in the room were staring at them. There was a small pause.

“The Man of Iron tells us we must away,” said Thor. 

“Monster clean-up duty,” said Black Widow to Steve, who groaned under his breath.

“Darcy, thank you once again for the excellent libations.”

After their goodbyes, the superheroes (!!!) trooped back out of her apartment door, and Randy peeked his head cautiously out into the hallway. “You…know those guys?”

“Long story,” said Darcy, distracted, and wandered off to her bedroom to collapse into a daze.

***

She reassured her parents and sister of her continuing existence, and later when Steph showed up the three roommates reunited with great gusty sighs of relief and much semi-hysterical giggling about their survival stories. Randy cooked them all some pasta (“Cooking grounds me,” he explained) and they sat down and glued themselves to Steph’s laptop to stream the news coverage of the attack. Darcy coaxed Franklin up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around his furry bulk, and only let him move when it was time for him to go for a walk. When everyone else had gone to bed, she curled up into a ball and sat awake for hours, staring into the middle distance and trying not to think.

Work was closed for the next few days, which left plenty of time for Darcy to really take a break and freak the hell out about the fact that her go-to contact during an emergency was an interplanetary criminal who was a real live alien from outer space. The focus was mainly on the ‘criminal’ part, though. The same level of criminal as the ‘Doktor Von Doktor’ or whatever the hell he was calling himself who had attacked D.C. Hell, probably an even worse criminal than Doktor I-Have-A-Giant-Purple-Tentacled-Creature-As-A-Pet. 

The best thing, Darcy figured, was to bury herself in discussions of the political and international ramifications of Giant Purple Monsters with various like-minded friends both near and distant. So for several days she chattered away with Randy (Steph couldn’t be bothered with this stuff), and with old college friends on the phone, and with local friends at the only café in the neighborhood that hadn’t been hit with laser beams. Then her job started back up again, and Darcy buried herself in it, and told herself that she didn’t feel like something was missing in her routine after work.

Late at night when she lay awake, chewing at her lips and wide-eyed, she allowed herself to actually admit (slightly) what her damn problem was.

See, Darcy didn’t talk to anybody. _Anybody._ And now that she came to think about it—and, oh, how she _didn’t want to think about it_ —she realized that, rather than reaching out to a trusted friend, or a boyfriend, or her parents, or a sister, or even a cousin, she’d…

There was a reason she’d never had a relationship last longer than a month. Hell, Darcy had never even had a best friend. She had never actively not wanted one, but it had just sort of happened that she never let anyone in. That had never bothered her—she trusted herself, and she had lots of friends, just never anyone super-close. It was fine.

She wasn’t supposed to _call someone_ when in a life-or-death situation. She was supposed to do something like leave a really rockin’ goodbye video on YouTube so that the world would remember how badass she was. Except now she had someone who was her first choice to call when she thought she was going to die. No one was ever supposed to be that close to her. _FUCK._

Not thinking about it seemed the best way to go, to Darcy, so she told herself that her internship truly _was_ super interesting, and she started taking really, really long walks after work so that she could get home and just fall right asleep.

Three weeks passed. Darcy worked, and went out with friends—but didn’t let them see that anything was bothering her. Because nothing _was_ bothering her. She was fine. Just hard-working, that was all. 

Until one day after work she got back from another really long walk, and was just kicking off her shoes when she heard a weird noise from the nest of blankets on her bed. “The hell?” she asked, and dug through the bedclothes, finally emerging with the source of the noise: her tablet. Flipping it to face her, she saw that the screen was taken up by the software Tony Stark had installed, with a little digitized scolding finger and a speech bubble saying ‘Answer your LokiPhone!’

“Shit,” she said aloud, and dithered for a moment. He’d never called _her_ before—it had always been the other way around—so it must be really important. And, to be fair, he had answered when she was huddled in a bathtub in fear for her life. “Shit,” she said again, jabbing the ‘connect’ button. The call screen blinked up, showing Loki’s cell, where he was pacing, his back to her at first. When he caught sight of her, he moved rapidly towards the screen, saying, “Finally.”

“…You okay?” He looked, to be frank, like _shit_. Dark circles under the eyes, tousled hair, the whole nine yards. “What happened?”

Now that he had her on the line, he didn’t seem to know what to say.

“Are they sending you back or something? Did someone bring you bad pie? Wait,” she said. “Is Thor okay?” The penny dropped. “Oh, _no_.”

“It’s…”

Neither of them wanted to say it, but Darcy was the one who had to bite the bullet. “It’s Joe’s mom, isn’t it.”

Loki all but disappeared from the screen, head in hands.

“But—didn’t she send you a casserole or something just recently?”

“How would you know?” he said with a snarl, but there was no fire behind it. Joe had told her in an email, but she wasn’t ready to admit that, so she just waited. “They say she has an infection. Something about a weakened immune system. I haven’t made it all the way through the medical texts that Laura brought me.”

Fingers slipping a little on the tablet’s case where her hands were sweating, Darcy took Loki’s appearance in, and let out an unsteady breath. “I’ll be there soon.”


	14. Reunions

The A.C. was malfunctioning on the train, and in the late-August heat it made for a very sweaty 3½ hours to New York City. She’d barely had time to throw a few things into a backpack before making her desperate dash to the station, and had she been 30 seconds later she would have missed the last train of the night. She almost pulled out her tablet to call Loki several times, but continued to remind herself that her fellow travelers would likely not take kindly to public communication with a famous convict. She settled for plugging in her earbuds and jiggling her foot impatiently, much to the consternation of the woman in the seat in front of her. 

It was nearly two in the morning by the time they arrived in New York. Darcy, so exhausted she’d practically come out the other side into hyperactivity, came back to herself in the process of buying some chocolate-frosted donettes at a 24-hour convenience store. Rubbing at her eyes, she stared up at the fluorescent lights and spotted herself in the convex security mirror by the cash register: she looked like a madwoman, hat askew, hair frazzled, and backpack hanging partially open off one shoulder. 

A quick consultation with her smartphone led Darcy to a nearby all-night coffee shop, where she availed herself of their tiny, grungy bathroom to straighten up. As much as it was her first inclination, it was probably not the greatest of ideas to go charging into SHIELD’s NYC headquarters at 2:30am. 

So she sipped coffee and nibbled at a chocolate croissant and even fell asleep on her arms for about half an hour at one point, until it was 6am and time to let people know she was around. First she fired off a text message to Joe, telling him that she’d heard what had happened and that she was around if he needed support. Then an email and a text message to Jane, saying she was in town and could stand a visit if they liked. Shortly, she received a typo-laden response from Jane saying she’d love to meet up, only 1) why was Darcy awake and 2) didn’t Darcy have work that day?

Darcy did have work that day, but when she’d boarded the train last night she’d sent her boss a frantic email about a family emergency and decided she wasn’t going to care beyond that. She kind of hated her job anyway, so she wasn’t particularly hoping they’d hire her on at the end of her internship in—wow—less than two weeks.

6:30am found Darcy in a minor argument with the second layer of security outside of Loki’s cell.

“Look, dude, they’re just donuts, okay? Little donuts. How long have you been working here?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” said the stone-faced agent on the right. Darcy cast an appealing look to the other agent.

“Please? I always bring pie, but I was kind of out, y’know, before dawn, and there weren’t any pie shops open. I’ll give _you_ guys donettes if you want—I brought extra.”

“Are you trying to bribe us?” the agent said, stoic.

“Darcy!” came Laura’s voice from the doorway, and a choir of angels sang out behind her—or maybe that was just Darcy’s overtired imagination. “You’re here! I got a call from Joe—come through, come through.” Laura placed a gentle hand on Darcy’s back and guided her past the other guards. Darcy’s backpack dangled from one tired hand, dragging along the ground. “It’s really good to see you, kid,” said Laura, once they’d reached her guardroom. They hugged—a little awkwardly, since it wasn’t something they’d done much before. “Shit’s been hitting the fan—ooh! Mini-donuts!” Darcy tossed her a pack, then turned to move through the door to Loki’s cell.

“I’m just gonna—“

“Whoa, whoa, wait! Sorry,” Laura grabbed Darcy’s arm and steered her back to a chair behind the desk. Darcy sank into it, confused. “The Director’s in there.”

“What?!” This had Darcy on her feet again, fatigue forgotten. “What the hell does _he_ want?”

“It’s not really my business—and not yours, either.”

“Yeah, but—this is basically the absolute worst time to be—“

“I know,” Laura said, melancholy. 

There was the sound of raised voices in the room beyond. Darcy darted an apologetic glance to Laura and charged the hell in, stopping short at the sight of Colonel Fury slamming a thick piece of paper up against the barrier to Loki’s cell. Loki was glaring at him murderously, looking even worse than he had when he’d called her the night before. Both startled and turned to her at her entrance.

The anger on Loki’s face dropped away when he spotted her, then quickly re-appeared when Fury turned back to him and resumed shouting.

“I know you know what these readings mean, and you’re going to damn well tell me!”

“You stubborn oaf! Are you so dimwitted that you don’t comprehend a statement of _fact?!_ I’ve told you: these readings are anomalous, but they are unfamiliar! I _don’t know what they mean!_ ”

“Either you tell me what—“

“Or what?” sneered Loki. “What else can you possibly strip me of?”

“Fury, _what the hell._ ” Darcy stepped further into the room, insinuating herself into the conversation. 

The Director visibly calmed himself, but the undercurrent of anger still ran through his voice. “I was under the impression you were at your internship for another several weeks, Miss Lewis.”

“If you know so much,” she challenged, “then you know why I’m here and not in Washington. And why you should probably _let this go_ for the moment.” She gestured to the paper still in Fury’s hand. Now that she could catch a glimpse of it, it looked like some kind of heat-signature photograph. There was some text across the top that was mostly indistinct except for ‘Montana.’

“Miss Lewis, this is of world-threatening importance.”

“Right, okay. So maybe you should go deal with that and let the people who’ve had a nasty shock deal with their own stuff,” Darcy spat, and gestured to Loki, who was fuming. “He clearly has no idea what you’re asking about.”

“He’s lied to us plenty before.” Fury shifted, and glanced into the cell, a determined look coming over his face. “Maybe we’re not using the right leverage. Maybe it’s time that we barred civilians from this very high-security area.”

At this point, Loki’s mattress burst into flames.

***

After things had calmed down a bit, Fury had swept out of the room looking all Matrix-y, and Loki had extinguished his now-charred mattress, Darcy distributed frosted donettes between herself and Loki, and they both sat on the floor, not eating. 

“Way to destroy your bed, genius. Now where are you gonna sleep?”

Loki gestured at the floor. “I’ve slept on worse.”

Darcy leaned forward and rested her forehead on the invisible barrier, letting the slight buzzing distract her from everything else.

“Thank you for shouting at Fury again for me.”

“Oh, yeah, anytime. It’s not like he’s pants-wettingly scary or anything.” Loki leaned his head against the barrier as well. “Are you looking down my shirt?” said Darcy after a minute.

“You’re wearing a hoodie.”

Darcy looked down. “Oh, yeah.” She’d put it on ‘cause it got chilly in SHIELD’s dungeon. Pause. “I feel like I should make a rude innuendo about Fury making your bed hot or something.” Exhausted laughter from both of them. “So did you actually not know what he was showing you?”

It spoke to how wrung-out Loki really was that he answered honestly. “I’ve no idea. I could see as well as he could that it was something abnormal, but beyond that?” He shrugged. “If he could take me to the site I could seek an answer with magic, but I doubt that anyone here would trust me that far.”

“You did set your mattress on fire,” said Darcy reasonably.

“He said he wouldn’t let you back in!”

“You know he was just trying to screw with you!”

“I know,” sighed Loki, and they both of them thumped their heads back onto the transparent wall.

“I wish we could play cards or something,” said Darcy, after a long silence. “Have you guys even heard from Joe again?”

“I imagine he’s saying his goodbyes.”

Darcy let out a harsh breath through clenched teeth. “I didn’t know it was that bad.” More silence. 

“You’ll not have trouble at work for being here?”

“Naw, it’s fine, they won’t even miss me.” Darcy refrained from mentioning the increasingly angry emails she’d been getting from her boss all morning. If she stayed in New York another day, chances were she’d be fired—her supervisor was particularly strict, especially since Darcy had been working on a time-sensitive project. “They owed me some time off anyway.” Interns didn’t get time off.

“Is there nothing we can do?” Loki asked, clearly referring to Joe.

“You can’t heal her with magic or anything, can you?”

“This isn’t the Green Mile,” he said with grim humor. He’d been on a Stephen King-novel-based-movie kick for the past week, apparently. “I’ve always been rubbish at healing magics.”

“We could get Laura in here, maybe send Joe an encouraging voicemail?” Darcy offered. “Then we should watch a movie, maybe. Something happy.”

***

Hours later, Darcy awoke suddenly from where she’d been slumped over her backpack. The last scene of _Dreamcatcher_ was playing on Loki’s tablet. Darcy cursed internally that she’d missed the rest of Loki’s excellent commentary on the film. Watching Loki watch Earth cinema was probably one of the most entertaining things Darcy had ever seen.

“Sleeping beauty has awakened,” said Loki, looking proud at using a human reference. Joe had said he’d been forcing him to watch some Disney, recently.

“I wasn’t asleep, you were asleep,” she returned. Loki indicated that she should wipe her chin, and Darcy discovered that there was some drool there. “Shut up.”

“You should probably find somewhere more comfortable to sleep than the floor. I’d offer you my bed, but—“ he gestured.

“Yeah, you set it on fire and then shot ice at it, I was there,” said Darcy, and they grinned at each other as she levered herself stiffly off the cement. “My friend Bao said I could crash at her place, but I can still stay, if you want.”

“Your Midgardian frailty has betrayed you—“

“ _My_ frailty? What about _your_ frailty, Mr. I’m-gonna-systematically-destroy-all-the-furniture-in-my-cell?—"

Casually examining his nails, Loki said, “Don’t think I don’t have better things to do with my time than spend it with—“

“That’s it, I’m totally staying. Since it’s such _torture_ for you.” Seizing the chair, she dragged it over to the corner, up against the barrier, and plopped down onto it. 

Loki rolled his eyes and shifted himself to press some buttons on the tablet in the wall. “Which film next?”

“Maybe _Cujo_? That one oughta keep me awake.”

“Be glad you missed the last one—it was atrocious.”

***

In the late afternoon, Darcy’s phone rang, and she scrambled to pull it out of her pocket, expecting it to be Joe. Jane’s picture was on the screen, though, and she held up one finger in Loki’s direction, so he’d stop talking. 

“Jane? What’s up?”

It was Thor’s voice. “[static]—arcy—[static]—must tell—[static]—ost Giants—[static]—city—[static]—coming for—[static]—you must flee!”

“Thor, what--?” The call abruptly cut off, and she held the cell phone up, shaking it as if that would fix the connection. “It’s your brother,” she said, looking up at Loki, whose brow was creased in mild concern.

“What did he say?”

“I think something about Frost Giants?” 

Loki was suddenly on his feet. “Leave,” he said, frantic. “Now.”

“What?!”

“This must be what those readings meant, the ones that Fury brought me. If the Jotunn are here on Midgard, they’ll be here for me. Go. Now, while you can.”

“What?!” Darcy said again. “And just leave you here? No way!”

“If you stay, you’ll be killed.”

“So will you!” she argued. “Maybe we can bust you out or something.”

He shook his head. “Other than the primary power grid, there are six separate generators powering this cell. You wouldn’t have enough time to shut them all down. Darcy,” he said, and stepped closer to the barrier, catching her eyes. She saw the desperate worry in his. “Please go.”

Not breaking eye contact, Darcy shouted, “Laura!”

At that moment, there was an enormous _THUDCHUNK_ noise, and all the lights went out.


	15. Confrontation

The warriors of Jotunheim found little resistance to their attack, and smashed through barriers and doorways on their way to the tiny room underground. Pale emergency lights had flickered on once they’d killed the Midgardian power sources, but the leading warriors still held palmfuls of cold fire aloft to light the way. The first giant into the room used an axe to lever the door open as one of the others in his group swept the Midgardian female aside, hissing at the sting of the tiny projectiles she’d fired at him.

Once all were facing forward, the leader kicked the handle of his axe, pushing the two sides of the door apart, and smashed the wall around it down, having first made it brittle with ice. The two Jotunn surged forward, where there was a tiny Midgardian woman babbling at them. They swept their gazes around the room, and into the empty cell.

“Where is he?” the leader growled, leaning over the woman.

“Um, he, um, zapped away or something? Please don’t kill me, dude, I totally don’t pose a threat or anything, I’ll just—“ The giant thrust the blade of his axe up under her chin, and the woman backed up against the wall, breathing quickly through her nose. “I’ll just sit here quietly in a corner, I promise, I won’t even try to resist.”

“Bring the hound,” he hissed, and a handler came forward with the enormous ice hound. The leader kept his axe at the woman’s neck as the hound sniffed its way around the room, shedding bits of ice from its fur as it went.

“The trail of his magic leads this way!” the hound’s handler cried out. Signaling to the others, the leader slowly pulled his axe away from the woman’s throat and followed the troop out of the room.

Darcy watched simulacrum-her blink out of existence as the thudding of Frost Giant feet faded down the hallway. As soon as the lights had gone out, she’d heard the humming of the forcefield-thing stop, and felt a hand seize her and yank her upwards into the cell. She hadn’t been able to help it—she’d shrieked—and felt a cool hand clap over her mouth. When the emergency lights had flickered on, she’d seen a pretty accurate representation of herself standing where she’d been before, and saw that it was Loki’s hand across her mouth. They’d both practically held their breath as fake-her babbled at the Frost Giants—and _wow_ those guys were big, ‘giant’ was totally accurate, she didn’t even know how they fit into the building—and as the Frost Giants turned and left. She sagged against Loki in relief, and when he let her go she stumbled forward a little.

“I’ve got to lead them away from the city,” said Loki.

“But you tricked them, right? They’re going away?”

He shook his head, saying, “They will not stop until they’ve found me, and they will destroy anything to get their way.”

“’Cause you attacked their planet?”

“And killed their king.”

“Right,” said Darcy. “I forgot. Your patricide.”

“Stay here,” said Loki, moving towards the entrance of the cell. The air shimmered around him, and suddenly he was wearing full-on battle armor, with two knives stuck into his belt.

“Um, still not leaving you alone, seriously—ah—“ Darcy started giggling, with just a tinge of hysterics mixed in. “Oh my _God,_ I forgot how ridiculous your helmet is,” she said, through desperate laughter.

“Is this the time?” He shifted, mildly perturbed. 

“You’re like—a—like a giant bunny or something—“

Loki swept across the room, nimbly jumping down from the cell and heading for the exit. Remembering herself, Darcy darted after him, and caught sight of—

“Shit! Laura!” She ran to the woman, who was slumped against a wall, clutching at her chest.

Laura struggled for breath. “Just had—the wind—knocked out of me.” She forced in a deeper gulp of air. “—be fine.”

Loki had just kept right on going, so Darcy apologized to Laura quickly, squeezing her hand, before taking off after him. “Don’t try to run away so you can keep me safe or whatever!” she called to him. “I know your game!”

“Shhh!” he hissed as she caught up to him, and he pressed her back against the wall with a hand on her shoulder. In looking over to catch sight of whatever he’d seen, she noticed that his helmet had disappeared. Probably impractical indoors or something. The whatever-it-was apparently left, because he turned back to her and whispered anxiously, “If you’re coming with me, keep up, but stay out of sight when we find the Jotunn, do you understand? They will not hesitate to hurt you if you’re in their way.”

Darcy nodded, eyes wide, and Loki snagged her hand. They moved quickly through the building, rapidly reaching an elevator shaft. He swung himself out into the dark, sending out one of those glowing balls of energy to light the way, and Darcy saw him catch onto a ladder and began climbing. Without a word, she grabbed hold of the ladder as well, and forced herself to focus on moving upward, and not on the cavernous echoing space below her.

Soon they reached the ground floor, and Loki helped her off of the ladder, keeping hold of her hand as they crossed the lobby of the building, which was utterly trashed. There was the distant sound of gunfire and explosions. “Wait!” Darcy said, and tried to grab at the front of Loki’s shirt—except he was wearing weird leather armor, so it wasn’t very effective. He turned to her anyway. “You’re not gonna give yourself up or anything? I’m kind of—“ she went slightly sheepish, “—uh, really not cool with you dying.”

“You’re probably one of the only ones,” he said with a tight smile. Taking a deep breath, he stroked a thumb across her cheek and said, “I’ve no intention of dying. Please,” he said again, “stay out of sight. I’m considerably more durable than you are.”

“Hey, I’m totally durable,” she protested weakly, and together they walked to the gaping hole where the front wall of the lobby had once been.

As they climbed over the rubble in front of the building, part of Darcy’s brain mused vaguely about how very strange it was to be out in the sunlight and walking around with Loki. On a normal—if slightly beaten-up—New York City street, with him in his crazy Asgardian gear. She was having weird flashbacks to Puente Antiguo, especially considering the temperature outside. Why would Frost Giants choose to invade in the summer? Of course, the humidity in New York was much higher than it had been in New Mexico— _pay attention, Darcy,_ she admonished herself, though she knew it was her brain just trying to cope with the scary.

They dashed across the street to lean up against a building. Around the corner they could see some SHIELD agents and police officers taking cover behind cars and firing their guns at the Frost Giants. Darcy and Loki peeked cautiously around the side of the building, and both caught sight of the same thing: there were a number of civilians huddled, terrified, in an alcove between the two sides of the battle. No sign of Thor or Steve or any of their friends yet—but Thor had been the one calling her, so maybe he’d got hung up somewhere? Shit, one more person to worry about.

Loki pointed at the cowering people in the alcove, and said, “See what you can do to get those people to safety.” Before she could react, she felt an odd spinning sensation, and she was _in the alcove._ Loki pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and sort of _faded_ from sight, though she kind of thought that she could sense him skirting away from her towards the edge of the battle.

Taking a deep breath, Darcy turned to the other frightened people around her. Right. She could do this. She surveyed the alcove, which was at the bottom of a short concrete stairwell, and flinched along with everyone else as several more explosions went off behind her. There was a metal door, with no visible handle or locks, and a small basement window.

“Does anyone have anything heavy with them?” The group stared at her for a second, then one businessman unsteadily held out a very well-made leather briefcase. Darcy grabbed hold of it and shoved her way through the people to the cellar window. She swung several times with the briefcase, and finally managed to break the glass on the window. She used her shoe to clear out most of the rest of the glass, wincing when a couple small shards found their way into the open top of her flat. “Kid,” she said, pointing at a little girl who was probably 11 years old, and fairly scrawny. The girl’s father clutched her closer. “I’m sorry, sir,” she addressed the man, then had to wait as there was a hail of machine-gun fire nearby. “But she’s gonna have to be the one to try to open the door. She’s the only one small enough.”

The child gently tugged herself out of her father’s grip. The man made to grab her again, but she shook her head at him, and said something softly that Darcy couldn’t make out due to the noise of the battle. They all watched the girl shimmy into the window—and then suddenly there was a hush behind them. Darcy flung herself to the edge of the alcove, and sucked in a sharp breath.

Loki was walking out into the middle of the street. He was calling something out to the Jotunn. One of the people behind her was crying into her hands, and Darcy shushed her absentmindedly.

Only a few words drifted over on a slight breeze. If Darcy had been okay with missing anything going on, she would have taken a moment to shrug off her hoodie, since it was probably like 80 degrees outside. Instead, she strained her ears and caught: “…Jotunheim…your king…will not accept…” Loki sounded like a smug asshole. What else was new? Darcy heard the door clunk open behind her, and the frantic shuffle of people crowding into the building. Then Loki called out, “Catch me if you can!” and took off down the street—right _through_ the center of the crowd of Frost Giants.

“ _Idiot!_ ” hissed Darcy, and clambered up the side of the concrete alcove, skinning her knee in the process. One of the people from the group behind her caught her by the ankle, and she looked back.

“Wait! Don’t go out there!” the concerned man cried out—it was the girl’s father. She shook her head and pulled herself the rest of the way up, out of his grasp. Limping because of her scraped knee, Darcy hustled forward as quickly as she could. She heard the SHIELD agents moving along beside her, and just hoped that none of them tried to stop her, because at this point she wasn’t sure if she wouldn’t claw their face off or something. Panting, she ran along the side of the street, underneath several buildings’ overhangs, holding onto her chest and wishing she’d been wearing a sports bra. 

The horde of Frost Giants was moving along at a fair clip, but Darcy saw some kind of ice—dagger—go flying out from the group at the front and strike something, and the Jotunn circled around whatever it was. Darcy pushed herself to run harder, and reached the side of the crowd just as SHIELD got their shit together and attacked the Frost Giants again. With vicious roars, most of the giants rounded on SHIELD and started fighting back, but the rest of the group—oh, no.

They’d caught him. That shard of ice had impaled one of Loki’s legs and he was stumbling towards a fountain in the center of a square. The leader of the Frost Giants followed him with heavy strides and another shard of ice over his head, ready to strike—Darcy could just barely make out the look of terror on Loki’s face. Unthinking, Darcy cried out, “ _No!_ ” and ran forward. Her peripheral vision had never been very good, but she did catch a glimpse of movement to her right before there was a heavy impact to her leg, and she went flying through the air.

Then everything went black.

***

It wasn’t until later that Darcy found out that the Loki she’d seen about to be killed was a magical double, and that, right after she’d gone down, most of the Avengers team had arrived and proceeded to kick some serious Jotunn butt.

At the time she woke up on the pavement, however, all she knew was that her head felt fuzzy, and when she opened her eyes, everything _looked_ fuzzy. Someone was holding her hand and stroking her hair. Loki’s face swam into view.

“I’m sorry, but your spectacles were broken.”

“Hunh?” she said, and blinked hard, willing her mind to clear.

“Your spectacles were broken,” he repeated, “when you foolishly did the _exact opposite_ of what I’d told you to do and ran into the middle of a battle unarmed and unprotected.”

Swallowing to moisten her dry throat, Darcy said, “You can’t boss me around.”

Loki smiled as if he’d just won the key to the city. “Clearly.” Darcy shifted to sit up, and Loki protested, “No, don’t—“ and went to hold her back as a wave of pain hit her. Darcy fought back nausea.

“Ah! Oh, _God._ ” She craned her neck, trying to look down. “Is my leg broken? Is that what hurts like someone shoved a scimitar into my knee?”

“Don’t look,” said Loki. “Really, don’t. Trust me.”

“Sure,” said Darcy, breathing slowly to make her way through a sea of pain. Loki went back to stroking her hair, and she squeezed his hand. “Couldn’t you heal me or something?”

“What did I tell you about--?”

“Right, you’re ‘rubbish’ at healing magic, excuse me for forgetting while lying in a pool of my own blood.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“So what happened? While I was—napping?”

“I’m sure you’ll find out,” said Loki, glancing behind him. “Your healers are coming. I’ll have to go away.”

“No, that’s stupid, tell them you can’t,” she said, and started breathing heavily again as the pain came creeping back. 

“Brother,” said a Thor-shaped blur from behind Loki. “It’s time to go.”

Loki started to stand, and Darcy clutched at his hand, “No, no! _Ah!_ ” she gasped in pain as her leg shifted. Loki dropped to his knee again, and kissed her softly on the forehead, and Darcy, in the middle of what remained of a battlefield, with a probably-broken leg and no glasses, had kind of a _total girl moment_.

_Wow,_ she thought. _So that’s what that’s supposed to feel like. When it actually means something._

And while Darcy melted into a puddle of pain and confused sappy feelings, the Thor-blur and Loki-blur went away, and then she was surrounded by paramedics who bound her up and strapped her down and whisked her away to the land of antiseptic.


	16. Endings

“Darcy,” Chelsea prompted.

Darcy blinked, pushed her backup glasses up her nose, and returned to the conversation. “What?” These drugs they had her on—they were _good_ drugs.

“I was just telling you how glad I am you’re alive, and you’re not even paying attention. Feelin’ the love, sis’.”

“Loves you, sis’,” responded Darcy, and patted at her sister’s hand vaguely where it sat on the itchy hospital blanket.

“This is the thanks I get for coming hundreds of miles to see you,” said Chelsea, smiling fondly.

“I think he likes me kind of a _lot,_ ” said Darcy in what she thought was a conspiratorial whisper, but was in fact nearly a yell. “Crazy, right? My whole life is this crazy—like, big crazy—um—thing. What was I saying?”

“That some guy likes you a lot,” said Chelsea. “Still don’t know which guy we’re talking about, though.”

“I do,” came a voice from the doorway, and it was—

“Jane! Hey, Jane! Hey! My leg hurts! And my side,” said Darcy, as Jane came over and put flowers in front of her. “Oh my God,” she said, tears springing up in her eyes. “You brought me flowers?” The question ended in a squeak. “Oh, _no._ Oh. I’m getting sappy in my old age.”

“I think it’s the morphine,” Chelsea stage-whispered to Jane.

“Jane,” Darcy grabbed at her arm, and Jane almost fell on top of her. “Jane, a space alien has a crush on me. Augh,” she cried, burying her face in her hands.

“She’s—" said Chelsea to Jane, and made a gesture probably meaning _totally out of it_. “I’m going to go get coffee and sandwiches. Would you like anything?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Jane, and Chelsea disappeared down the hall. “Darcy, be careful what you say, we are in public.”

“But Jane, what did _you_ do when a space alien had a crush on you?”

“ _My_ space alien hasn’t killed a bunch of people.”

“Pshhhhhhhh,” Darcy waved a hand. “He’s like a warriororwhatever. ‘Course he’s killed people. Fought wars. Your hair’s pretty,” she said, and reached out a hand to stroke Jane’s hair. Jane obligingly leaned in, and sighed.

***

Unfortunately, once the bruising on Darcy’s side had mostly faded to nasty brown-and-yellow, she was no longer allowed morphine or even Vicodin and had to settle for ordinary painkillers, which just didn’t cut it. Chelsea loaded her into the back of her sedan and took Darcy back to her place, hundreds of miles away, with Darcy protesting all the way that there were _things_ she had to be around for in New York and Chelsea asked What things?, and Darcy said Well, my friend Joe’s mother is dying, and Chelsea said You almost died, and Darcy said Please, I’m totally fine, let’s turn back and then Chelsea turned the radio up really loud and sang along with Journey at the top of her lungs.

A week passed at Chelsea’s house. Darcy mostly slept through it. At one point she did call Joe, though, and found out that while Laura was recovering, Joe’s mother was not. Darcy did her best to offer comfort, but Joe wanted to be distracted and demanded she tell him everything about what happened with the Frost Giants.

“I heard Loki kissed you,” said Joe, and Darcy almost dropped the phone.

“What?! No,” she said. “Who told you that?”

“SHIELD agents gossip. Did he, though?”

Pressing the phone to her chest, Darcy heaved a great sigh, and thought, _Here is a man who is suffering._ “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “But! Only on the forehead!”

“On the cheek is what I heard.”

“Oh, that too.”

Darcy could practically feel the smugness radiating from the other end of the phone.

“Shut up, Joe,” she said.

“Glad you stuck with it, aren’t ya, Darce?”

“So you’re not going to lecture me about what a bad idea this is?” Jane had done that. At length. To be fair, Darcy had been high as a kite, so mostly what she remembered was Jane’s angry-face, and her own fingers continually reaching out to ‘turn that frown upside-down.’ Thor, however, was apparently _finally_ convinced that Loki had had a turn-around (what with the not-running-away-from-the-battle, and the leading-the-attackers-away-from-civilians, and the not-running-away-when-the-battle-was- _over_ ), and was hopefully coming to terms with the fact that mental illness is a really real issue.

“Ideas aren’t good or bad, really. They just are.”

“Yeah,” said Darcy, feeling a blush heat her face and cursing herself for it.

When Darcy wasn’t sleeping or utterly overcome with pain that ibuprofen was not entirely masking, she was alternately panicking and feeling gooey squishy emotions that she’d never dealt with before. Mostly because she tended to avoid squishy emotions—or any emotions, really. Chelsea was, of course, _such_ an older sister about it.

“He has a criminal record, though, Chelsea.”

“Wahh! My name is Darcy and I’m scared of my feelings!”

“But I talked to him! About stuff!”

“Oh, no, not stuff!”

And when Darcy was indulging in gooey squishy feelings, with a semi-permanent blush on her face, Chelsea would come by and pinch her cheek and babble various Yiddish phrases they’d learned from their mother at her.

Then the TV reports about the incident came on, and Chelsea pieced it together. Fortunately, there were no actual videos of Loki kissing her ( _GOD,_ the imagined humiliation), but there was a crowd-sourced video of Loki saying “Catch me if you can!” and a little blurry brunette figure taking off after a mass of Frost Giants.

“No, _really?_ ”

“Oh my God, _shut up,_ Chelsea.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said he was a convict.” Chelsea bounced on the couch a little as she sat, which jostled Darcy’s leg, making her wince and Chelsea grimace in apology. “How the hell—?” Chelsea cut herself off.

After a minute of worried contemplation, Darcy asked, “Why aren’t you more upset about this?” 

Chelsea shrugged, and, for once speaking frankly said, “’Cause I trust you. And I assume you know stuff that I don’t.”

Blinking, Darcy found herself getting a little misty-eyed. She blamed it on the leg pain. “You know it’s all super-top-secret, right?”

Leaning forward, Chelsea smiled expectantly.

So Darcy told her everything. Which was astonishingly cathartic. This ‘opening up to other people’ thing—it could really catch on. 

“Pie, huh?” 

“Yup.”

“Didn’t you bring cousin Sheila pie?”

“Yeah, she was going through some stuff…”

“Huh, and your outer-space boyfriend, he was going through some stuff, too?”

“He’s not my ‘boyfriend’!” Darcy said, blushing so hard she thought she might spontaneously combust. “He’s over a thousand years old!” Dammit, she never thought she’d say that. Who was she turning into?

“ _Awwwwww,_ Darcy-warcy has a little crushie-wushie!” said Chelsea, swooping in and pinching Darcy’s cheeks again as Darcy shrieked and laughed as she never had before.

***

The internship was over by the time Darcy would’ve headed back to Washington. Darcy’s boss at the last location was remarkably accepting about Darcy’s claim that she’d been kicked by a horse. Maybe the supervisor was a horse-lover or something. Who knew?

What Darcy knew was that none of the three internship locations had asked her to stay on as a permanent employee, and that honestly suited her fine. She was finally beginning to grasp that she didn’t much want to work in politics.

“Color me surprised,” said her father over the phone. Darcy was on speakerphone with both her parents.

“Really, though, a lawyer, honey?” her mom chimed in.

“I think it’s a great idea!” said Chelsea, who was seated next to Darcy on the couch. “She’s always been so good at arguing!”

“This is true,” their mom conceded. “She has basically won every argument this family has ever had.”

“That’s because I am the Queen of Awesomeland.”

“You know you’ll have to drop the slang to be a lawyer?” said their father.

“Whatevs, I have years of school left before I have to do that.”

But before she could throw herself into applying for loans and law schools and looking for a job in the interim, she got another important phone call. Chelsea came running in the front door, on her way back from work, keys jingling in her hand, right as the call ended. Darcy turned to her, ashen-faced.

“I just heard on the radio,” started Chelsea.

“They’re sending him back.” Of course they were. Clearly, Earth wasn’t a safe place to keep him if other people were going to show up and try to break in and kill the guy. “And it was such a good PR move to incarcerate him here.” Chelsea said nothing and hugged her, and the next day loaded her onto a train with a pair of crutches, and sent her back to New York.

Thor and Jane were waiting for her at Penn Station, where Darcy fought through the crowds with her ungainly crutches. You’d think people would be a little more courteous to someone who was clearly injured, but people were in such a terrible hurry that she almost got knocked over twice, and then someone whacked her in the leg really hard with a suitcase and she let out a stream of curse words that would make the saltiest sailor proud.

The cursing attracted Jane and Thor’s attention, and they waded through the crowd towards her. Thor immediately swept Darcy up in a hug.

“I am sorry, Darcy.”

She hitched a quiet sob against Thor’s shoulder, then collected herself and pulled away, balancing precariously with her crutches. “Dude, he’s your brother.”

“You were the one who cured him of his ills,” said Thor, who was once again the saddest puppy.

“Not all of them,” she demurred. “You helped. And he’s still a jerk.”

“Yes, but he’s always been a ‘jerk,’” said Thor with a smile.

***

The exit point was in the middle of a field. These Asgardians—they really had a flair for the dramatic. Darcy stumbled along on her crutches until Thor finally got fed up with watching her struggle and picked her up and carried her. So when they approached the spot where Loki was already standing, in a marked-off circle with his hands cuffed in front of him, Loki saw her cuddled up in Thor’s arms and smirked horribly at her for her whole approach. This of course forced her to stick her tongue out at him, which helped to lighten her mood a bit.

“I will escort him through the Bifrost,” explained Thor, as he set Darcy down and Jane set her up with her crutches, “and then I shall return to Earth. All is ready, but—if you wish to say goodbye, I have arranged it for you.”

Somehow Darcy had a feeling this ‘arrangement’ had involved a great deal of shouting, so Darcy gave Thor as big of a hug as she could give while still clutching onto her crutches. Then she gracelessly maneuvered her way through the freaking _barricade_ they’d set up around the circle, and hobbled to the center of the circle, so she and Loki could say goodbye while everyone stared at them.

“I am the most embarrassed right now,” she said as she walked up to him, and Loki, who’d been trying to hide a hangdog look, broke into an amused grin. They smiled at each other for a minute, until Darcy gestured with a crutch at his handcuffs and said, “How do I even hug you?”

“Hug me?” Loki fluttered his eyelashes at her.

“Shut up, you dick, I’m not letting you leave the planet without a hug.” More stupid grinning at each other until Darcy said, “Fuck it,” and dumped her crutches to the side. Hopping forward, she lifted Loki’s shackled hands and put the circle of his arms over her head, then wrapped her arms around his middle and _leaned,_ partly because she wanted that experience, but mostly because her damned leg was broken. Loki awkwardly hugged back as best he could, hands coming up together behind her head.

She heard him sigh up over her head, and she said into his chest, “You’re tall.”

“I know.”

“Stop it.”

“Can’t. Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“You’re right. I’m not,” he said, leaning his head against hers and petting her hair.

And of course, that was when Darcy started really having to swallow back tears.

“Look at me,” Loki said, and Darcy tilted her head up to look him in the eye, and how fucked up was it that they’d been friends for like a year and she’d never been this close to him before? Wow, really close. Even, like, breathing the same air, and, okay, kissing—

Darcy stopped thinking for a moment.

When they pulled away from each other, though, she remembered that there were like thirty SHIELD agents staring at them and turned bright red. Loki grinned at her. “Oh, you think you’re so funny,” she said, and laughed, and pulled him down for another kiss and then buried her face in his chest. Darcy felt his hands shimmy down a bit so that his arms were snug around her lower back, and he leaned forward so his head was next to hers.

“We’ll see each other again,” he said in her ear.

“Yeah, we’d better. And it had better not be when I’m 75.”

“Promise.”

Darcy focused on memorizing as much about him as she could—the way he smelled, the way his hair was lifting in the breeze, even the way he was breathing against her—and then kicked herself for being such a sap—and then went back to memorizing, and she should have known that that was the moment someone would step in to interrupt. Obviously they weren’t allowed to just stand in the middle of a field hugging forever.

Fucking reality. Ruining everything.

It was Thor who interrupted, which was probably kinder than it being a SHIELD agent. The actual separation was rather difficult; what with his handcuffs and her not-being-able-to-stand-on-her-own. Eventually with Thor’s assistance she was extricated and told to stand behind the line.

Jane helped Darcy through the barricade and they both watched as two extraterrestrials were beamed away on a rainbow bridge, and one reappeared shortly thereafter, and they all got back into cars and went back into the city and it wasn’t until Darcy was alone that she let herself cry.

Because there was no one to bring Loki pie in Asgard.


	17. Epilogue

***

One Year Later

***

Law school was _hard._

That wasn’t to say Darcy didn’t like a challenge; she did. But between classes and her part-time job at a boutique down the street, she often felt like a walking ball of exhaustion, stress, and student loan debt. 

Still, at least she was in Boston. Ah, New England in the fall. After a long afternoon spent staring at tiny-print legal vocabulary lists, Darcy decided to break for coffee before she headed to work for the evening. Bleary-eyed, she descended the three flights of stairs from her apartment to the street to walk to the closest coffee shop that wasn’t Starbucks.

While in line she checked her email on her phone: spam, spam, something for school, spam, ooh, something from Joe! She barely glanced up from her phone to order her coffee, when a familiar voice said, “Would you like a pastry with that?” and she looked up into Loki’s smirking face. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he was wearing the coffee shop’s uniform, which included a stylish blue baseball cap.

For a second or two she gaped, until she gathered herself enough to say, “Conference. Outside. Now.”

“I’ll have to take my break…”

“ _Now!_ ” Somehow she managed not to hyperventilate as she went outside to wait, staring at the overcast-but-still-bright sky, and the lovely fall foliage on what few trees were growing in the city. Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by too much schoolwork. Darcy had almost convinced herself of this when Loki once again appeared in front of her.

“Hello,” he said, with a cocky little smile like he hadn’t just thrown a surprise grenade into the middle of her day.

“What the _fuck,_ ” said Darcy. “How did—what—did you _break out?_ ”

“Let out for good behavior.”

“ _What?_ ” Darcy blurted, spittle flying from her mouth.

“I might have had an advocate on my behalf explaining what he’d learned about Midgardian psychiatry.”

“They let you come back to _Earth?_ ”

“Ah, no,” he said. “No, technically they think I’m spending too much time holed up in my rooms in the palace in Asgard. I put up a spell so Heimdall can’t see me here.”

“You broke parole to come to Earth, and then you—you got a _job_ in a _coffee shop?_ And _that’s how you tell me that you’re back?_ ”

“I do have to pay rent here, if I want to stay. I told them I’m a ‘Loki impersonator.’ You know, for parties and such. They said the resemblance is _uncanny._ ” A self-satisfied grin wreathed his face. Clearly he was enjoying the fact that Darcy was at a loss for words. “I did tell you we’d see each other again, didn’t I?”

“You—you _complete—shithead asshole!_ ” she cried, punching him twice on the shoulder and then flying into his arms.

They hugged for a long moment, then Loki said, “Are you _crying?_ ”

“No,” said Darcy, in a waterlogged voice. “I have allergies.”

“To what?”

“Smug bastards. Shut up.” She breathed in the nasty coffee-shop smell of his apron, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“I have to go back to work,” Loki said eventually, not moving. “Don’t want to get fired on my first day.”

“I can’t _believe_ you asked me if I wanted a pastry.”

“Would you like to go out later? After my shift?”

Slowly, Darcy lifted her head and caught his eye, and they both began to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, happy Valentine's Day! and stuff. My Valentine to you all is finishing this fic, which is also kind of a Valentine to me, since I've never ever finished a fic of this magnitude before, let alone a kissy-fic. So YAY for you all for reading along and YAY for me for finishing the story!
> 
> I know some of you will be demanding a sequel, to which I say: hold on, it's coming. Lol. I can't promise how soon it'll be out, though, since I still have to deal with some serious Real Life Garbage Bullshit Nonsense (if anyone knows of someone looking for a roommate + two cats in the Boston area, give me a holler). 
> 
> In the meantime, if you want to follow me on Tumblr I may or may not post snippets of fic-in-progress, and you can send me messages and stuff and bug me. You're also welcome to send me prompts for micro-fics, which I will write if I have time. My username on Tumblr is the same as it is on here: fructosebat. Come party with me!
> 
> I love you all so so much and thank you times a million for reading this fic and commenting and sending me kudos, you all are a soothing balm to me during troubled times! 
> 
> <3 <3 <3 <3 happyvalentine'sdayblaghhhhcommercialismbutloveorwhatever <3 <3 <3 <3


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